@Cycloptichorn,
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Well, that was just to balance the budget.
To pay down the debt, I would recommend a series of spending cuts - with emphasis towards the DoD's bloated budget, but with some taken to social programs and the DoE too - and a series of tax increases, with the creation of a NEW top tax bracket - 55%, that phases in at 10 million in income per year. Decrease SS payouts by 1% per decade and increase the retirement age by 1 year every 25 years and SS never has a problem again, and boom - there you are.
Of course, adopting Single-payer health care would basically eliminate our long-term deficit projections as well. But I don't expect people to go the sensible route on that.
Cycloptichorn
While raising the age for social security eligibility makes sense (and would save a lot), decreasing the "SS payouts by 1%/decade" as the baby boom generation reaches eligibility and as our overall demographic continues to age would entail fairly significant reductions in benefits and the more or less complete elimination of cost-of-living increases in benefits - something that could be easier to say than to do (particularly considering the likelihood that we are soon going to see the resumption of fairly high inflation rates).
Reducing the DOD budget by (say) 30% would yield significant savings, but might alter the geopolitical balance in the world in hard to predict ways. The DOE is a fairly dysfunctional component of government involving many disparate parts, the most expensive of which are the Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia and Berkeley Laboratories as well as the Oak Ridge and Savannah River (SO CA) facilities as well as Harry Reid's much loved Nevada Test Site. That would entail shutting down our nuclear weapons complex - all together saving about the annual cost of the recently extended unemployment benefits. This too would have interesting geopolitical side effects.
I think you are being rather fanciful in assuming that going to a single payer, government operated health care system would eliminate our deficit in view of the fact that all of the (very substantial) existing government health care systems (MEDICARE, MEDICAID and TRICARE) have ended up costing large multiples of the government forecasts made when they were enacted. The example of Europe in which we can see the intensity of public reactions to reductions in public benefits once enacted should give us pause in considering enacting even more.
What do you suppose would be the effect on economic growth of the new taxes? The combination of high inflation and no growth ("stagflation" was the word used to describe this reality during the Jimmy Carter years) proved to be politically unsustainable and induced the Reagan revolution.
In any event it will be interesting to observe what emerges on the political scene. Left wing Democrats are expressing disappointment (rage in some cases) with Obama's politically necessary compromises. The new Republican power in the Congress is as yet untested, and almost anything could happen in the next two years as we approach the next election cycle. It is likely that the Republicans in the House will themselves propose some spending cuts (that is where spending bills must originate), but I wouldn't guess how bold (or timid) they might be. The opportunity for political partisanship and game-playing on both sides of the aisle appears to be very great. I don't hope for much.
