US Government shutdown

Very interesting, thanks for sharing it.

Invictus wrote:Reckon you folk may find the following an interesting perspective: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/roots-go ... t-shutdown

And BTW, from where I'm sitting, the majority of the debate seems to be about changing the speed of the debt increase, rather that starting to pay it off. Am I wrong about that?

I was watching the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson when he had Ben Stein on (I thought it was going to be Robin Williams). He and Ben Stein had an interesting discussion about the current shut down. The point they made that resonated with me was that by shutting down the government they (those that are effectively voting in favor of it) are showing quite of bit of disrespect for the process.

Invictus wrote:Reckon you folk may find the following an interesting perspective: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/roots-go ... t-shutdown

And BTW, from where I'm sitting, the majority of the debate seems to be about changing the speed of the debt increase, rather that starting to pay it off. Am I wrong about that?

You can only take one stepmatba time.

In the past, there was the prospect that population growth plus productivity increases would grow the economy until what seems like an unbearable debt now becomes trivial in the future. There is no prospect of this happening. Even worse, with $16 Trillion in debt just minor increase in interest rates can dramatically increase the deficit. What if the US were to have to start paying 10% or 20% interest? We would be screwed.

Invictus wrote:Reckon you folk may find the following an interesting perspective: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/roots-go ... t-shutdown

And BTW, from where I'm sitting, the majority of the debate seems to be about changing the speed of the debt increase, rather that starting to pay it off. Am I wrong about that?

It's a step in the right direction. Cutting government spending too dramatically in a short time would have ripple effects that could screw up the economy.

If the government had to balance the budget in a single year, that's roughly a trillion dollars that won't be spent. The businesses that would have earned that money in exchange for goods and services would take a hit, not buying as much from their suppliers and probably have to let some employees go. Same thing would happen with their suppliers and former employees having to cut back to the point where a whole bunch of businesses and people would take a hit.

How quickly the deficit could be cut without causing massive problems is open to debate, but cutting it too quickly would be just as bad as cutting it too slowly and running up the debt.

How quickly the deficit could be cut without causing massive problems is open to debate, but cutting it too quickly would be just as bad as cutting it too slowly and running up the debt.

One place to start would be to pass this bipartisan bill.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1390/text

Basically it is to create a bipartisan commission to troll through ancient federal regulations and come up with lists of old regulations to be eliminated. The problem is that once regulations are created they never disappear even when they are no longer needed. They impose a compliance burden on businesses etc without producing anything tangible in return. It helps reduce the deficit by allowing businesses etc to spend the money more productively doing things that help the economy thus generating more tax revenue. (The best thing that we can do to help the deficit is to get out of this recession, get people working again and generating taxable income.)

In the US, you can take all the hard looks you want, but if it is in the Constitution, look is about all you are gonna do.

Skywatcher44 wrote:In the US, you can take all the hard looks you want, but if it is in the Constitution, look is about all you are gonna do.

The problem is not in the US Constitution. The problem is in the legislation, executive orders and bureaucratic regulations.

It is very easy for Congress and the President to cull out the majority of the archaic regulations.

namelessfly wrote:

Skywatcher44 wrote:In the US, you can take all the hard looks you want, but if it is in the Constitution, look is about all you are gonna do.

The problem is not in the US Constitution. The problem is in the legislation, executive orders and bureaucratic regulations.

It is very easy for Congress and the President to cull out the majority of the archaic regulations.

Unfortunately, nobody is willing to expend the political capital or time to do so. While it would be easier to repeal some of the older, nonsensical laws the bureaucratic regulations will be defended tooth and nail. After all, how else are the bureaucrats going to justify their jobs if there are fewer regulations for them to enforce. So, instead, Congress tries to pass new laws to Band-aid the problems the old laws created. These laws in turn create new unintended consequences requiring more bureaucratic regulations which in turn require new laws to fix which........ in a never ending cycle of errors. Like Murphy's Law, the Law of Unintended Consequences is one that Congress can't repeal, can't amend or even try to get away from.

Just like when we repealed Prohibition.

We did not want to put all of those Revenuers out of work, so we included a ban on fully automatic machine guns, short barrelled shotguns and rifles, and silencers.

The result has been a disaster for Constitutional rights that goes far beyond the Second Amendment.

The Republican party leadership in the US House of Representatives deliberately rigged the rules of the House to allow them to hold the US government hostage to their demands to prevent the implementation of a law that was legally approved of by both houses of Congress, signed into law by the President, and upheld by the Supreme Court.

H. Res 368 wrote: October 1 (legislative day, September 30), 2013.
Resolved, That the House hereby (1) takes from the Speaker's table the joint
resolution (H.J. Res. 59) making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014,
and for other purposes, with the House amendment to the Senate amendment
thereto, (2) insists on its amendment, and (3) requests a conference with the
Senate thereon.
Sec. 2. Any motion pursuant to clause 4 of rule XXII relating to House
Joint Resolution 59 may be offered only by the Majority Leader or his designee.

-http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th/house-resolution/368/text

For all the non-US citizens following this thread:
I hope you begin to understand some of the problems with the current system here. We are on a forum dedicated to people who enjoy the same or at least similar tastes in reading material. Many have served in the military, worked for the government or industries related to the military. Yet there are as many opinions about who is at fault, what the causes are and what the solutions are as there are posters. We are by most standards an informed, interested, educated body of people, yet we can not agree. With all of that said, it is one of our strengths as well as one of our weaknesses. When such a similar group can't agree, what chance is there that all the diverse cultures, nationalities and religions present can reach an equality of dissatisfaction? Until such an event can be engineered, there will continue to be fights in the government such as we are presently seeing.