One TRILLION dollars

[thecoalman]

All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"...

A billion dollars...

A hundred billion dollars...

Eight hundred billion dollars...

One TRILLION dollars...

What does that look like?

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

[Pawel Kowalski]

Where were all you fiscal conservatives in the last 8 years. Or during the 8 years of Reagan? We all missed you.

Yes, yes, I know, an inflated military budget is just peachy, it's when you start spending on health care that you are outraged.

[thecoalman]

Well I didn't intend for this to be a political topic, as worthy a benefactor that Healthcare is I have 0 confidence in the government (read Democrats or Republicans) fiddling with the healthcare system. Every major social program introduced by the U.S. government is a failure, bloated, abused and you can keep going on with that list.

Healthcare in the U.S. needs reform and they can start with tort reform however since about 50% of our lovely Congressman are lawyers good luck with that. The insurance comapnies are no angels either, far from it... We have a good system now as a base however it needs reform. Maybe the government should get the regulation part down first, hmm?

[thecoalman]

Pawel what's your thoughts on this 1 to 2 trillion dollars the Obama administration is trying to hide from people? No tax on the middle class my ass.

Sources: White House Official Boosts Cap, Trade Rev Estimate
By COREY BOLES AND MARTIN VAUGHAN
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -- A top White House economic adviser told Senate staff a proposed cap and trade system could raise "two-to-three times" the administration's existing $646 billion revenue estimate, according to five people at the meeting.

This could mean the cap and trade system could actually generate between roughly $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion between fiscal years 2012 and 2019.

Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, offered the estimate at a Feb. 26 meeting on Capitol Hill with a bipartisan group of staffers, most of whom are attached to the Senate Finance Committee, according to five Senate aides who attended the meeting. They spoke on condition they wouldn't be identified by name.

[Ron]

My mother told me many times if you can't say anything nice about something.... so here goes:

The inflationary pressures of a C&T system will prevent this country from going into a devastating deflationary spiral. It will allow our dollar to become so devalued that we will be able to pay off our national debt.

I had proposed that we abandon our reckless financing of our national debt with 2 year notes and move everything back to 30 year bonds, then inflate the hell out of the dollar, spreading the pain of our financial collapse amongst our bondholders as the only way out of this predicament. The C&T system will accomplish the same goal as long as they work on lengthening the average maturity of the US debt ASAP.

I was very upset with the pork introduced into the (now puny) $500 billion 911 package, can you imagine how I feel about the last couple of months? (Even knowing that we did what we HAD to do to stabilize the financial system? We were SUPPOSED to buy troubled assets, an actual investment. HTF that turned into making equity investments into publicly traded companies... Paulson should be dragged into the square and shot.... although the system didn't collapse and it is hard to argue that success of that approach with the theoretical merit of the approach not tried, I think I will anyway. Sorry Mom.)

[Pawel Kowalski]

thecoalman, I am not trying to drag this on. All I am saying is I wish you were as concerned about spending in the last 8 years as you suddenly seem to be now. I just find the whole thing a little ironic, I don't think conservatives have ever disowned their own policies this quickly.

You want to cut spending? Start with the military. In regards to healthcare I'm all for tort reform, but if you think that will put a dent in our health care prices I would love to know what you are basing that on, because actual research in this area disagrees.

And in case you haven't been paying attention I'm all for higher taxes right now. I'd rather pay this bill now than force my children to.

[Ron]

Are you crazy to reduce the military budget in this day and age? The world is on the brink of financial collapse and social instability. How's your German, Pawel? I think you've gone 'round the bend.

PS "How's your German" is metaphorical.

[thecoalman]

thecoalman, I am not trying to drag this on. All I am saying is I wish you were as concerned about spending in the last 8 years as you suddenly seem to be now.

How do you know what my thoughts were on this for the last eight years, the Republicans should be ashamed of themselves. I have Republican leanings but labeling me as a Republican is hardly accurate. I certainly don't agree with many of their platforms but the core beliefs in less government and less taxes is something I certainly advocate.

You want to cut spending?

Government waste is enormous in both the military and every other facet of government. If you want to cut spending you need to eliminate it. Instead they are creating more taxpayer funded programs that long term are not going to do anything but create a larger welfare state.

And in case you haven't been paying attention I'm all for higher taxes right now. I'd rather pay this bill now than force my children to.

The 1 to 2 trillion is not a "tax" but self imposed expense that is only going to hurt our economy and drive many more business's out of business. As if they don't have enough reason to move offshore certainly doubling the energy bills will. Personally I think 1 to 2 trillion is low ball, look around you... everything you see to some degree is there because of cheap energy from coal right down to the concrete footers made with cement that hold up the building.

[Ron]

My solar farm doesn't sound so stupid now, does it?

Look we all KNEW this was coming, and getting off of an extremely finite resource like fossil fuels in general and liquid fuels in particular would be necessary anyway. Too bad we didn't spend that second $800 billion stimulus package building my entire solar farm package. We'd have sooo much energy to do things like make cement and steel and hydrogen, all without adding a puff of CO2.

When the price of oil is $1000 a barrel and coal is at the equivalent price, the US could have had the most cost effective cheap source of fuel in the world. Imagine the prosperity that we could achieve with our energy needs accommodated without sending trillions overseas.

Ohhh well. Good choices are hard to make.

[Ron]

The C&T is a tax and it is broad based. Now as long as nobody comes along and says that we need to make it revenue neutral for anyone earning less than $75,000 a year I won't complain, I guess.... We need a broad based tax to balance our spending sprees.

The socialists have officially won.

It will take a while to get people angry enough to reverse course again, likely many decades -- if the Union can stand for that long.

[Pawel Kowalski]

Are you crazy to reduce the military budget in this day and age? The world is on the brink of financial collapse and social instability. How's your German, Pawel? I think you've gone 'round the bend.

PS "How's your German" is metaphorical.

Awesome! This gives me an opportunity to use one of my favorite movie quotes. So you're afraid of ze germans Ron? Did you look at the chart I linked to? It's from 2007 but it has looked like that for a very long time. So who exactly are you scared of? We could cut our military spending in half, close all those bases around the world (if anything bring those bases back home so the money feeds our economy), and we would still be the strongest military out there by far.

Russia is not coming to get you, neither is China. The people we are fighting right now aren't going to be defeated with big bad weapons, times have changed. Take the money we spend on military and put it in to research to make your solar farm more cost effective and maybe we will all benefit instead of a couple greedy bastards at the top.

And Ron I see since TA isn't here anymore I guess you will be the one injecting socialism in to the debate from now on? Great, I started to miss that being thrown around. How long before you start bringing up communism?

[Ron]

I'm not injecting socialism into the debate, it is a fait accompli. The US has nationalized the largest financial institutions, the Fed has successfully claimed the right to act in virtually any manner it sees fit and the budget and C&T system will take taxes at such a high level to argue anything else is ludicrous. It's called surrender.

Since you bring up communism, care to share with us your definition for the differences between socialism, communism and what the US will have in place in two years)? Remember, I'm not T_A.

[Ron]

So who exactly are you scared of? We could cut our military spending in half, close all those bases around the world (if anything bring those bases back home so the money feeds our economy), and we would still be the strongest military out there by far.

Care to tell me what German spending on military was in the years between 1919 and 1929?
Do you really think the US is nimble enough to respond in the same way as it did in 1941/1942?

Do you really want world events to build up the way they did from 1919 to 1939, or would you prefer that there be some force in the world that keeps things down to a dull roar, with piddling little interventions like Iraq with it's insignificant (in relevance) 4,500 killed compared to the tens of millions of WWII?

Man, learn something from history -- apply it to current circumstances. Understand the human condition! This is why you don't understand that huge numbers of people are lazy and seek immediate gratification and won't work if they don't have to -- even if it means that they'll never be comfortably well off when they could be. Understand what will happen in the world in the face of economic devastation and hunger. That's what it means to be a true "student of history" and not someone who just parrots irrelevant facts about current military spending levels.

And if it sounds like I am being condescending, well... sorry.

[Pawel Kowalski]

Actually we haven't nationalized those institutions because we are suckers. We control 80% of AIG financially but we refuse to sit on the board of this company. That's not nationalization as we have no say in how they operate. And I never heard you complain about the FDIC, what is that if not socialism? How long has that been around?

Socialism is a fear mongering term and you should know better (actually I'm pretty sure you do). Our economy always had socialism in it, and it always will. Having no socialism in our economy would be a disaster. And I don't care what Fox News claims, we will never have a true socialist economy, you know that as well as I do.

I also don't see how you can compare what is going on now to the early 1900s. If a war broke out with Russia today (for example) our trillion dollar military budget wouldn't save us from all those nukes they have. Just as their small budget wouldn't save them from ours.

To answer your question on how much Germany spent back then I don't know the exact figure, but I do remember from my history lessons that Hitler ramped it by a huge margin in the 1930s, which Chamberlain didn't do anything about. At the same time back then the united states did not have a military industrial complex, our spending for the military at the time was tiny and I wouldn't be shocked if Germany's spending was similar to ours at the time (by all means correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not in the mood to google right now). We didn't put this spending in to hyperdrive until the late 1930s or the early 1940s.

An all out war will never break out between the world's super powers, if it does we are all screwed anyway. The real threat are extremists that strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up in countries like Pakistan, our huge military budget isn't doing anything about that.

Also on a side note, you know what really angers me when people mention the fact that 4,500 dead americans isn't that large in relative terms? It's the fact that the million dead Iraqis aren't mentioned in the same sentence. But that's for another discussion.

Since you bring up communism, care to share with us your definition for the differences between socialism, communism and what the US will have in place in two years)? Remember, I'm not T_A.

I'm pretty sure I explained the difference between socialism and communism to TA on a number of occassions since he was always confused about this, you can go back and look. Where will be in 2 years? I have no clue, but it sure as hell won't be socialism even if our government does the right thing by nationalizing a couple of banks that need to be nationalized.

[Ron]

An all out war will never break out between the world's super powers, if it does we are all screwed anyway. The real threat are extremists that strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up in countries like Pakistan, our huge military budget isn't doing anything about that.

Man your understanding of risk is pretty far off, too.

Wouldn't you think the real risk isn't either a superpower nuclear war or a lone suicide bomber (or small terrorist organization) that you've mentioned, but more likely to be either a conventional war between allied factions, or a country (or countries) that produce a couple of nuclear weapons?

Look around the world and count.