Solve the Deficit - Interactive Simulation
 

And how long it will take for this to get to PARF.....?

Ibttparf

I got the projected 2015 shortfall to $418 billion and the 2030 shortfall to $1,355 billion with 11% savings from taxes and 89% from spending cuts, BUT...................

The 800 pound gorilla, the elephant in the room, was suspiciously missing from the NY times game.
No, not really. It is not surprising that the bleeding heart liberal rag did not mention anything about welfare cuts. Not a darned thing.

Throw in a reasonable amount of welfare cuts and the budget is balanced, maybe even a surplus.
No one should be on welfare for life. No one. Social security and private charity are supposed to take care of that.
I say welfare for three years and the benefits start shrinking down until after 5 years they are over. And no one can receive more than 5 full years of benefits in a lifetime.

That'd create one hell of a surplus and it's teach people to work.
Not only would it help the federal deficit, it'd help the states out too, at least the bleeding heart liberal welfare states like California. 12% of the population in the country but 32% of all the welfare recipients.
That's because the morons in Sacramento like to increase benefits so the low-lifes move here and get a raise.
California is a dead-beat magnet.
It's also totally broke, heck of a co-inky-dink, isn't it?

Webb- I tried to balance the deficit but I don't necessary agree with all the areas to be cut in each catagory or necessarily the percentages. The options pigeon hole are limited. Based on my beliefs I would have to include cuts or add taxes as part of a category rather then as line items.

I focused on SS/Medicare by raising the age limits to 70, eliminated foreign aid, farm subsidies and similar B.S., cut the federal workforce and programs and reduced foreign military expenditures. I didn't raise a single tax - I closed the tax loopholes and lowered overall tax rates, and eliminated the mortgage interest deduction for high-income households.

Easy peasy - although this is WAY oversimplistic.

As sammy says, other than SS/Medicaid I'd think there are other areas that could be scaled back or eliminated (unless these are included under the broadly-worded categories provided and it's just not clear).

One thing is absolutely clear - we need to eliminate or severely curtail SS/Medicare/Medicaid/Obamacare or we're screwed and will have no choice but to print gajillions of dollars.

I got it done.

It confirms what I suspected - you can't do it by just cutting benefits to both the rich and the poor. There are not enuff rich to add up, and the poor don't have enuff money/benefits per capita.

You have to chew on the middle class.

And that, is not politically popular.

Excellent point. how much is spent on welfare programs annually?




Are you aware of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996?

How are you going to "teach" someone with MS or severe rheumatoid arthritis, or an IQ of 65 to work?
Social security should be for the retirement of working men and women. Welfare should be for the indigent. SS would be be solvent now if it weren't being spent for welfare. It's wrong to pay for taking care of the sick and the lame out of a fund paid for only by working men and women. Pay for their aid out of the general fund that everyone pays in to - welfare. What you suggest is yet another way to transfer the cost of government away from income and onto the wages of working people.

Problem solved. Now I want my cut...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1289788250.jpg

As the middle class continues to shrink that should be less and less of a problem.
We are getting closer and closer to a country of haves and have-nots.

High paying manufacturing jobs are a thing of the past. We spent about 50 years of hourly workers being elevated to middle class incomes and we have to accept that that has ended. The middle class is going back to its roots of being entrepreneurs and small independent businesses. This is where hope and economic growth are found and as such, they are going to have to nurtured, not taxed out of existence.

No, SS would be solvent now if the Baby Boomers hadn't raided the fund and pissed it away on Vietnam and on silly slush-fund social programs, earmarks and pork for the last 40-or-so years.

They screwed it up and have attempted to stick the next generation (us) with the bill, so I say we throw it right back in their collective faces and say, "too bad - no bennies for you".

Harsh? Yep. But effective. If we did that, I bet it would be a LOOOOOOOOONG time before another generation tried the same crap.

If you added up all those with MS et al and were not able to work I don't think it would be as much as you think. Not a big drain in other words.

What I see first hand from 'training programs' from the state is that they are a freaking joke. I big joke. The problem isn't with the people that need help, the problem is how they are dealt with and managed. The government offices and personal that deal with them are as incompetent as you can imagine. If it was privatized and incentive focused then you would see many folks getting the training they need.

So why toss them off welfare after 3 or 5 years?

14% tax hikes

86% spending cuts

it was only the limited imagination of the test builder that kept it from being all spending cuts.

So I tried it... the first level is rigged. Where's the option to cut all foreign aid? Where's the option to cut social welfare? Why do tax cuts not show a net increase in "tax revenue" as they do in the real world? Looks like the idea is to get people to think the only answer to the equation is tax increases. I smell PARF...

I've never seen anyone provide evidence that tax cuts lead to tax revenue increases in the real world. With 100 years of pretty good data, you'd think the people who believe this could list each federal tax cut and show that >50% of them resulted in higher revenues from that tax the following year. No proof, no credibility.

Here's a good looking read I found on the subject - I haven't picked through all of it yet but so far appears to be a decent read...

The Laffer Curve: Past, Present, and Future | The Heritage Foundation

They don't always show an increase in revenue. Arthur Laffer is a fairly well known economist, respected by liberals and conservatives alike. His "Laffer Curve" shows that cutting taxes does not necessarily increase tax revenue even when those are the only two factors considered. He also warns that there are many, many other factors to include. There are so many other factors that saying "tax cuts = increased revenue" is absurdly simplistic.

Logically, it depends on the state of the economy. If an economy is in a crisis of capacity (where demand outpaces production), cutting taxes to allow business to expand and hire more people would logically increase revenue.
When an economy is in a crisis of demand (where debt and unemployment keeps consumers from buying - which is the state the US and much of the world is now) cutting taxes on business just gives them more money to stash in the bank. They aren't going to use it to increase production capacity when consumers aren't buying/can't buy the products they make. That's the current situation - American companies have a record nearly $2 trillion sitting on the sidelines now. What is going to get this economy moving is cash in the hands of consumers, not cuts in the taxes of producers.

Or ship jobs overseas.


More cash in the hands of consumers could just go back into the Stock Market with lower capital gains taxes. The Laffer Curve Theory was developed in the 70s. What's the delta of consumer involvement in the Stock Market in the 70s vs. today?

Will volume make up for lower capital gains?

Did it. 96% spending cuts, 4% taxes.

There is a lot that wasn't even offered as an option.

The Laffler article argues that total federal receipts rose in the years following the Coolidge, Kennedy, and Reagan tax cuts. That is not actually true for the Coolidge cuts (1918-1925 top marginal rate went from 77% to 25%, total federal receipts did not increase in the following four years), it is true for the Kennedy and Reagan cuts (1963-1965 top marginal rate went from 91% to 70% and 1980-1982 top rate went from 70% to 50%, respectively, total federal receipts increased in the following four years).

However, the Laffler article is misleading, because it leaves out this fact. Total federal receipts also rose in the years that did not follow any tax cut. If you compare tax cut periods to non-tax cut periods, there is no evidence that receipts grew more in years following tax cuts.

Here is a chart showing the top marginal federal income tax rate (blue line), total federal tax receipts (red line). The receipts line is log plotted, so the slope of the line indicates the percentage growth. In the few years following the Kennedy and Reagan cuts, the slope of the line is no different than in other years of the period.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1289835983.jpg

Strictly speaking, the data actually suggests that receipts grow more in years following tax increases than in years following tax cuts.

Here is a scattergram plot of receipt growth and tax rate change. Each point is a year, and represents the percent growth of average receipts in the four following years over the average receipts in the four preceding years, versus the change in average top marginal rate in the four following years over the average rate in the four preceding years. I used four year periods because that's what the Laffler article did. The trendline slopes positive, meaning that increasing rates tend to coincide with higher growth in receipts.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1289836022.jpg

If you still believe Laffler curve "theory", given nearly 100 years of actual data that don't support it, consider this. Laffler did not say that lower tax rates always cause higher tax receipts. He theorized that there is a point above which tax rates become "prohibitive". His theory was that when rates are at or above that prohibitive point, increases in rates cause declines in receipts while decreases in rates cause increases in receipts. When rates are below the prohibitive point, his theory was that the reverse happens: increases in rates cause increases in receipts while decreases in rates cause decreases in receipts. That's implicit in the shape of the curve, shown below.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1289835958.jpg



The Laffer Curve: Past, Present, and Future | The Heritage Foundation
Laffler Curve article that P-O-P refers to
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/pdf/hist.pdf
Federal receipts, see table 1.1 p. 21
Consumer Price Index, 1913- | The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
CPI and inflation, 1913-2010E, base year is 100= avg of 1982-1984.
INFLATION AND THE CONSUMER PRICE INDEX
calculating constant dollars from CPI

From the peak of 2007, total receipts fell -18% to 2009, or $463BN. About 1/3 of the current budget deficit is due to the cyclicality of the economy as it affects receipts - economy declines, govt gets less tax revenues. About 2/3 is due to the cyclicality of the economy as it affects spending - govt acts as a "shock absorber", spending more in bad times to support economy and fend off even worse declines. Then there is some structural part to the budget deficit. As the economy improves, govt needs to dial back the spending (some of that is going to be automatic - stimulus programs end, UE benefits decline), tax revenue will rise, and deficit can and should fall. That needs to happen over the next five years. The second document I linked to shows current projection of deficit declining from peak $1.8TR to $500BN in five years, with no changes to tax or other policy. More should be done, but trying to do it too quickly risks knocking the legs out from under what is still a wobbly economic recovery.

+1
I'm battening down the hatches. I'm not replacing my BMW when it goes off lease (I'll have to get by with the truck and the Porsches :-( ) and I've pulled the plug on a $350k project start-up because I think with the new philosophy in congress what you just said WILL happen.

He also notes that what makes taxes "prohibitive" is psychological. Regardless of the tax rate, if people sense that taxes are too high, they will start taking actions to avoid them. His theory is psychological guesswork, not the mathematical certainty it has been held out to be.

not only no proof, there is not even much data that suggests it might be true

Aka Japan's botched recovery, or 1937-1940 in the US.

I took the neocon, conservative Republican route and took away all taxes for the wealthy and the mega corporations, in fact gave them more tax breaks so they would have more money to invest in business and workers overseas. I also removed the financial oversights that were supposed to keep the stock brokers and money lenders under some form of control while eradicating Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment benefits, Welfare and any other "social" programs that are the only lifeline between a life and homelessness. After all it's only the old, indigent, unemployable (read most American families) that will be out on the street. I increased the military budget so prison camps can be built to put the homeless masses in. I also earmarked funds to start the construction of special "showers" and furnaces once they're too old or indigent to perform as slaves. After all "those" people are disposed of America will be free, white, conservative and most certainly on the road to recovery.

0% Taxes
100% Spending Cuts
-and-
I saved the Smithsonian and our National Parks.

My Choices

Glenn Beck, is that you?