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Our government just spent $5 trillion in economic multipliers, in three years, so we must be golden then, eh?
We can have out government buy $100 billion in green energy crap, which ends up flushed down a rat hole, and it does not make us a wealthy nation, it just make Obama's cronies wealthy.
Ah, you make the illogical leap that we must be having massive fiscal stimulus because we have a big budget deficit;
Quote:
my answer is that the deficit is a result of the depressed economy, but how do we show that without getting too much into the weeds?
Well, here’s a quick and dirty approach. Suppose that spending and revenues would, in the absence of the slump, have risen at 5 percent per year — roughly GDP growth plus inflation, and actually a bit slower than actual spending growth (6 percent per year) from 2000 to 2007. With this assumption, I can draw three charts for the federal government (using CBO data) and one for state and local (using FRED) that, I think, tell the story.
First, most of the surge in the federal deficit is about plunging revenue. In the figure below, the “No recession” line shows what would have happened if federal revenue had grown 5 percent per year after 2007:
That’s about an $800 billion per year shortfall.
What about spending? Well, it is higher than you would have expected in the absence of the slump, by around $300 billion:
What’s that $300 billion about? Well, they’re mainly about the category CBO calls “income security”, mainly food stamps and unemployment insurance:
You're just going to have to accept the fact that you aren't in Kansas anymore.
Surrender Dorothy....
Mircea
That didn't work out too well for the wicked witch, did it? For all that you were saying about Medicare's collapse, if Medicare is unsustainable so is private insurance.
If you look at http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statisti...ds//tables.pdf
Since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8%, but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. If you do the math, private insurance premiums have risen 1/3 more than Medicare spending.
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