Solve the Deficit - Interactive Simulation

[RWebb]

Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

[TimT]

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

[KaptKaos]

Ibttparf

[sammyg2]

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?

[drcoastline]

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.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

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.

[RWebb]

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.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

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

Originally Posted by sammyg2

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.

Originally Posted by sammyg2

No one should be on welfare for life. No one. Social security and private charity are supposed to take care of that.

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

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

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.

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.

[M.D. Holloway]

Problem solved. Now I want my cut...

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by RWebb

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.

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.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

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.

[M.D. Holloway]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

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.

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.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by LubeMaster77

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.

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

[varmint]

14% tax hikes

86% spending cuts

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

[Brando]

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...

[jyl]

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.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

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

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Brando

Why do tax cuts not show a net increase in "tax revenue" as they do in the real world? .

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.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by jyl

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.

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.