Sounds like this is a misleading article; based on the below the proposed budget will be an increase from this year, but less than what DoD wanted.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003022493
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10% cut in military budget
- Thread starter JBM
- Start date
Sounds like this is a misleading article; based on the below the proposed budget will be an increase from this year, but less than what DoD wanted.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003022493
I bet they do but you would never know.. They don't advertise the fact and hide behind anonymity.
Airlinepilotcentral has some management lurkers and posters.. Some folks have been called to the mat by managers and were shown some of their posts..
At FEDEX, many of middle management and a few upper are or were union members.. So who knows how the feel and think; I am sure if you ask you will get 2 seperate answers.. Like talking with the detailer!
You know, I believe something like 40% of the labor force in Switzerland, a country reknowned for having a business climate friendly to free-enterprise, is unionized. Yet, in Switzerland, you don't see the unions and businesses clashing with each other the way they do in America. This is a good deal because the unions and businesses in Switzerland made an agreement that they would always try to work things out with each other so as to avoid conflicts and strikes and so forth.
I am in general against unions, but I believe unions can serve a purpose here and there. However, unions in America, like Big Business, have a nasty tendency to mistreat their members as well.
As for stimulating the economy, I'd do some permanent supply-side focused tax cuts and also create $400 billion in tax cuts, with the other $400 billion in infrastructure spending.
The thing with going too much with infrastructure spending is that GDP isn't really being produced I don't think. It's work that's being created, which will aleviate some of the pain, but not actual wealth. When the work runs out, if businesses haven't gotten back to creating jobs, then the work is up but there's no new jobs for anyone and no actual economic growth.
I am in general against unions, but I believe unions can serve a purpose here and there. However, unions in America, like Big Business, have a nasty tendency to mistreat their members as well.
As for stimulating the economy, I'd do some permanent supply-side focused tax cuts and also create $400 billion in tax cuts, with the other $400 billion in infrastructure spending.
The thing with going too much with infrastructure spending is that GDP isn't really being produced I don't think. It's work that's being created, which will aleviate some of the pain, but not actual wealth. When the work runs out, if businesses haven't gotten back to creating jobs, then the work is up but there's no new jobs for anyone and no actual economic growth.
The politicans are generally ignorant! I don't think Congress understands what that kind of debt means... But we got change; we don't have to worry about paying the morgage or putting gas in the car.. Or so I heard
FIFY.
Does it not strike anyone else as odd that at a time where virtually every American is taking a hard look at their expenses and many are cutting back spending, our government is blowing through money like....well...a drunken sailor?
There is a disconnect somewhere between "government spending" and "taxpayer spending". Every dollar of that pork comes out of our paychecks, and my 4 year old will be paying interest on it until he retires.
What happened to the idea of cutting back on spending when times get tough, and paying down debt (or eliminating it) when times are good? How is that basic logic lost when you are elected to public office?
Oh, I forget. We can always cut the military budget. Right?
Cause it ain't THEIR money so they don't care.. They need those ear marks to stay in office... Power corrupts..
The system is broken, IMO..
No odder than earlier when we gave tax cuts to the wealthiest at a time when we are at war, and blowing through cash at an alarming rate. The last administration and the Republican congress ran up the federal deficit, and asked no sacrifice from the American people to pay for the war (well, someone did ask the American people to go shopping
). I find it humorous the alarms are going off now, after all of the deficit spending we've been dealing with for so long.As for worry about cutting the military budget, look at exhelodrvr's post:
exhelodrvr said:
Actually, President Hoover's attempt to balance the budget and cutting spending during the beginning of the Great Depression is often cited as one factor in making it worse in the beginning. Because private industries/businesses spending has contracted the only big game left in town is the government, which can go into massive debt where businesses can't. You want to balance the books and run up surpluses when the times are good so that you can run up a deficit when times get bad, to keep things going.
This is one generally accepted school of thought with economists, not my idea. It certainly is not universal, but widely accepted.
Not quite; they went down into the middle-class as well, and removed an additional ten to fifteen million off of the tax roles I believe; many of the individuals paying income taxes in the highest bracket are small businesses as well, which are who create the jobs. They also helped the U.S. economy recover from the recession it was in at the time, and increased revenues to the Treasury. Had the Republicans been more fiscally conservative, we likely would have had a $100+ billion dollar surplus by the end of 2007.
and blowing through cash at an alarming rate. The last administration and the Republican congress ran up the federal deficit, and asked no sacrifice from the American people to pay for the war (well, someone did ask the American people to go shopping
Conservatives never were for any of the big spending the Republicans did; the Republican party was not conservative in that sense.
That the Democrats seem to be offended that the Republicans made them look fiscally conservative over the last eight years and have thus vowed to take back the mantel of being big spenders, has conservatives even more up in arms.
That is the Keynesian idea, but I do not believe it has ever once worked. Government cannot perform the function of the consumers in terms of buying goods and services all over. They can try to send checks to the people, but in bad times, usually people just hoard them, or they are too small to make a difference. Or it can go into debt to fund infrastructure, but again, this isn't real wealth creation, it's just creating work. If businesses don't produce jobs, then the economy doesn't grow.
If Uncle Sam can go into debt or print enough money to give people a check for say $20,000 to everyone then yes it can work in theory, as people will purchase things, but when the checks are only a few hundred bucks, it doesn't work well. And I imagine it would need to be debt for huge checks, because it all 320 million Americans got a check for $20K from printed money, I have a feeling prices would skyrocket due to extraordinary inflation.
What sent us into the Depression was the Congress's passing and Hoover's signing of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which caused other countries to retaliate with similar tariffs, and ground global trade to a halt; the New York Times had a headline the day before the 1929 stock market crash about the likely passage of the tariff, which many believe is what triggered the crash.
Then Hoover increased the top tax rate from something like 24% to 65% (in an attempt to balance the budget as mentioned), and made things much worse. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve did the total opposite of their intended purpose and let banks fail by the thousands, contracting the money supply.
Then came FDR and his New Deal which really put the "Great" into the Great Depression.
Here is what FDR's Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau said in May 1939: "We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong ... somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!"
The thing is, if government can go into debt to try and "stimulate" the economy through spending, which can drive up inflation, then why not just go into debt to give large tax breaks, even if temporarily, to the private sector, which is what creates jobs?
Or balance it, with tax cuts to the private sector, and then infrastructure spending to alleviate the pain.
This allows the private sector to create jobs and doesn't cause inflation because the economy is not getting a bunch of additional dollars pumped into it.
Cutting taxes will not increase revenues to the Treasury enough to make up for the lost revenue. It keeps getting thrown out there, but it simply isn't true.
Hm, apparently we've been busy crying over the fire in the kitchen when the entire town is ablaze and nobody cares. Don't believe me that nobody cares? Look at CNN's page dedicated exclusively to the Fed and you'll see no mention of it; in fact the last news of any lending puts the total at $243 Billion, but suddenly and miraculously it comes out at a Financial Services Committee meeting: ...that now $1.2 Trillion has been "spent" or "lent" depending on what verb you want to use.
So the Treasury gets $700B and spends half, while the Fed receives $2T and spends over half of that which is three and a half times the amount the Treasury spent. Meanwhile we were griping over Unions and auto company CEO's like it mattered. Holy whool over the eyes, Batman!
This is completely... insane.:icon_rage:icon_rage:icon_rage
So the Treasury gets $700B and spends half, while the Fed receives $2T and spends over half of that which is three and a half times the amount the Treasury spent. Meanwhile we were griping over Unions and auto company CEO's like it mattered. Holy whool over the eyes, Batman!
This is completely... insane.:icon_rage:icon_rage:icon_rage
On another note.. (not to re-jack this thread)... Anyone out there know how this 'budget cut' will affect the aviation community in the near future?
I know that during the Clinton Administration (although his budget cuts were extremely aggressive), it meant that flight hours were cut and things got really tight (from what I heard).
I didn't know if this budget cut was aimed at any particular area of the DOD or military (like special projects, etc), or if it will affect the entire military.
Do you think it will at all affect SNAs in the pipelines at all?
I know that during the Clinton Administration (although his budget cuts were extremely aggressive), it meant that flight hours were cut and things got really tight (from what I heard).
I didn't know if this budget cut was aimed at any particular area of the DOD or military (like special projects, etc), or if it will affect the entire military.
Do you think it will at all affect SNAs in the pipelines at all?
It just did under the Bush Administration. The Republicans spent crazy amounts of money, but the deficit still started shrinking around 2006-2007. What is not true is the claim that cutting taxes will always increase revenues. So yes, the Republican claim that "You cut taxes, you increase revenues," is not always true. It just depends on which side of the Laffer curve you are on. There are multiple examples of when cutting taxes increased revenues to the Treasury throughout history, and throughout the world.
What gets economists antsy is the math doesn't always work out that way, but they forget that humans are no automatons. People and businesses change their behavior when taxes are increased or decreased.
But cutting taxes will no more always increase revenues then raising taxes will always increase revenues.
It also depends on a number of factors, such as:
1) The size of the country
2) The size of the country's economy
3) The condition of the country's economy
4) The type of tax
5) The rate at which the tax is currently set
6) The tax system in place
7) The time period being considered for the tax
8) The ease of moving into underground activities
9) What are the rates in other countries/states/cities, etc...that businesses and individuals could flee to.
10) The prevalance of legal loopholes
For example, the United States has one of the world's highest corporate tax rates. We also have one of the lowest collection rates for corporate tax revenues of any nation, because our corporations go and exploit every loophole they can in our incredibly convulted tax code. The solution to this thus is to cut the corporate tax and close the loopholes. Ireland saw their economic growth explode after cutting their corporate tax rate. Russia collects more revenues with their 10% current flat tax rate then when they had top tax rates of 50% and 70%.
Revenues have also always increased whenever the tax on capital was cut. Some economists debate over whether this is only temporary, in which case then revenues may decline off afterwards, but then one can argue that with the tax on capital cut, the economy experiences more growth which makes up for this, etc...but we do know that historically, whenever capital gains tax rates are cut, revenues increase, and when the rate is raised, the revenues have decreased.
Tom Daschle is a douche and a cheat. Just thought I'd throw that out there while everyone is bitching about stuff they hate that will never change.