Citation for proportional national debt example?
August 11, 2011 9:54 AM Subscribe
Where did I recently read this? I saw a nice little paragraph putting the US debt situation in proportional context. It went something like "a family earning 35k a year, with 100k credit card dept, spending 78k a month and making deep cuts to bring that down to 72k."
It was really recent, like I read it in the past week. But the darn thing's hiding from me in google and my browser history. Do you remember?
Best answer: Here as well, but with some debunking:
Unless the Jones family can, say, suddenly increase their income at will by raising taxes; unless the Jones family can enact policies that will vastly increase or harm economic opportunities for their members; unless the Jones family has obligations to family members that extend into the distant future, this analogy is meaningless. It’s also dangerous, wrong, and the kind of thinking that aptly explains the financial mess our country is in today.posted by quadrilaterals at 10:25 AM on August 11, 2011 [7 favorites]
Here's the original radio broadcast. I agree with those that disagree with him. The USA doesn't have a spending problem, it has a revenue problem, aka some of the lowest taxes in the developed world.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:37 AM on August 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by blue_beetle at 10:37 AM on August 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Great, thanks very much everyone! I knew somebody would be more on top of the Internets than I am.
Quadrilaterals, I do understand that the value of any such simplistic device is not to fully explain anything, but to shed light on a situation that, due to the unusual numbers involved, is difficult to conceptualize. Still, a growing number of people are starting to see that the analogy is reasonably good.
The US government can't arbitrarily raise tax income, as we've seen. The only source for significantly higher tax revenues would be the rich, and the government has shown itself powerless in that direction.
The government does not have options for vastly increasing economic opportunity long term, but there are plenty of options for causing lasting economic harm and most of those are being aggressively pursued. They masquerade as "opportunities" like the keystone pipeline, shale drilling, and coal initiatives, but that charade is only rhetorically sound given a foolishly narrow conception of economics.
I'm not sure what you mean about obligations into the distant future—doesn't every citizen have those? And it's not like our government is going to honor its long-term obligations. Social Security is going down, if not under Obama, then probably under one of his GOP successors.
The Joneses will probably buy some lottery tickets and pray for a better tomorrow.
posted by maniabug at 10:50 AM on August 11, 2011
Quadrilaterals, I do understand that the value of any such simplistic device is not to fully explain anything, but to shed light on a situation that, due to the unusual numbers involved, is difficult to conceptualize. Still, a growing number of people are starting to see that the analogy is reasonably good.
The US government can't arbitrarily raise tax income, as we've seen. The only source for significantly higher tax revenues would be the rich, and the government has shown itself powerless in that direction.
The government does not have options for vastly increasing economic opportunity long term, but there are plenty of options for causing lasting economic harm and most of those are being aggressively pursued. They masquerade as "opportunities" like the keystone pipeline, shale drilling, and coal initiatives, but that charade is only rhetorically sound given a foolishly narrow conception of economics.
I'm not sure what you mean about obligations into the distant future—doesn't every citizen have those? And it's not like our government is going to honor its long-term obligations. Social Security is going down, if not under Obama, then probably under one of his GOP successors.
The Joneses will probably buy some lottery tickets and pray for a better tomorrow.
posted by maniabug at 10:50 AM on August 11, 2011
The US government can't arbitrarily raise tax income, as we've seen. The only source for significantly higher tax revenues would be the rich, and the government has shown itself powerless in that direction.
It's not powerlessness, it's lack of will. People in office know they don't have a public mandate for this due to the rhetoric they're hearing and their own erroneous estimates of their own lifetime earning power, and so the incentive is all on one side. If the public began to exert serious pressure for this, it would happen. We just don't have enough public pressure to make this happen right now.
posted by Miko at 11:32 AM on August 11, 2011
It's not powerlessness, it's lack of will. People in office know they don't have a public mandate for this due to the rhetoric they're hearing and their own erroneous estimates of their own lifetime earning power, and so the incentive is all on one side. If the public began to exert serious pressure for this, it would happen. We just don't have enough public pressure to make this happen right now.
posted by Miko at 11:32 AM on August 11, 2011
Mod note: This thread is about sources for the quotation not for a debate on the general idea. Debates go to email starting now, not AskMe, thanks.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:42 AM on August 11, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:42 AM on August 11, 2011 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by michaelh at 9:56 AM on August 11, 2011