Wednesday, February 9, 2011
House Republicans hand down their first wave of cuts, many programs hit
Here's the first wave of House GOP cuts, a total of $43 bln. Some of these programs that are being cut are great programs that have helped many and contributed to a cleaner environment.
Cuts to:
Environmental Protection Agency, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, family planning assistance, Pell Grants and other education grants and programs and possibly furloughs of federal workers.
A stripping away of services and income by a gang of blind ideologues, in the name of their "religion," which is fiscal conservatism. Blame a totally misguided and propagandized public who threw their support behind these fanatics.
No we can all look forward to a return of Love Canal, tumbling educational levels and more unopposed, poisonous right wing media.
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20 comments:
More eduction spending doesn't equal abetter educated populace. There is no correlation there.
The reason that education costs are so high is the same reason that health care costs are so high: government subsidies. The universities just set tuition high enough to capture all of the subsidies. If there were no subsidies, universities would be forced to cut costs. They could start with bloated salaries, administrative pork, and things that have absoultely nothing to do with educating the student.
Costs for higher education remained flat for decades adjusted for dollar debasement before govt. became so heavily involved. Yet one more area that govt. has screwed up.
This is a retraction of money supply from the real economy and a lowering of the "G" government spending in the macro equations.
a. the budget might "balance" but
b. we'll be at 1999 again as per Norman's analysis on the dot com implosion which was a result of CLinton's "balancing" or really retraction of money back into the fed/tsy from the RReal economy.
> dot com implosion 1999-2001
> argentina explosion 2001 via rise in interest rates
c. Interest rates will have no where to go but up since everything else will come to a grinding halt except the stimulus which does not descend out of banks and big corporation - but what is the difference between GMAC and GE banks anyway ?
d. Volcker Part II dude
rise in interest rates - which countries will be affected ?
e. i = f( s ) : investment is a function of spending. savings will go down again.
By supporting the Euro with open swap lines, the USA Fed Tsy is protecting the world from a sharp rise in the U$D.
If the Fed did not protect the Euro with this support, then the Euro would fall if not fail and the puritan exporters of USA would find themselves in a quandry since the dollar would be too expensive even for the Japanese.
google,
The administration has lately tried to equate any spending with investment. It is only an investment if the spending is on capital equipment. It very much matters where the money is spent. War and digging ditches do not have the same effect as real capital investment. Government just engages in present consumption spending. That's just more of the poison that got us in this mess.
The reason that there was a dotcom bubble in the 90's was the same reason that we had a housing bubble. It was Greenspan's cheap money policy. Anytime anything happened in the world from the crisis in asia to the Y2K scare, he resorted to the printing press. It wasn't a "new economy" as some twits thought, but was due to the same thing that always causes credit bubbles. Nothing "new economy" about that; it's a very old phenomenon.
Speaking of credit bubbles, I came across an interesting video about the housing bubble in Canada. Their bubble looks to be about where our Fed-created housing bubble was in 2006. If interested go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_acwahNKjNU&feature=related
Of course it does. Do you really think that if we had no public school system, GI bill, education grants, etc, that our country would be better off? You can't be serious. That line about spending not doing anything for education is one of those ridiculous libertarian comments that hold no truth whatsoever. All the countries that have highly educated populations spend more as a % of GDP on education than we do. The least educated countries spend the least. Go look it up.
Last year the amount we spent on education equated to 1.7% of GDP. You call that overspending??? Believe me, if we spent as much on education as we did on defense, our kids would rank at the very top of every survey in every subject there is, compared to any country.
Oh, excuse me, I was mistaken. Just went back and looked at the numbers. We don't spend three times more on defense, we actually spend 7 times more on defense than we do on education!! (Elementary, secondary, vocational education and higher education). Defense: $719 bln. Education in the areas mentioned: $104 bln. Here is the link.
Mike,
Are you just counting federal spending on education as a percentage of GDP? Much of the spending is at the state and local level as you are doubtlessly aware.
I don't know where you got that data, but I went digging and found different data.
Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe-education-spending-of-gdp
The U.S. (state, local, federal) spends 5.7% of GDP on education. We spend more than Canada, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Hong Kong, South Korea, Greece, Argentina and Japan as a percentage of GDP. Japan is expecially notewothy because they spend 3.7% of GDP on education while routinely trouncing U.S. students when tested.
Interstingly, such noted education powerhouses as Namibia, Barbados, Swaziland, Morocco, Tunisia, Bolivia, Cyprus, Slovenia, Jamaica, Malawi, and Belarus all spend more as a percentage of GDP that the U.S.
What this tells me is that there is a point of diminishing returns with education spending.
I checked out your link about U.S. militiary spending versus education spending as a percentage of GDP. I am a big critic of how much the military consumes not just in dollars but in human capital. A huge chunk of our best R&D talent is busy with building things that kill instead of things that could save or improve lives. It's not so much the percentage of spending relative to GDP that bothers me, but the gross dollars spent. I think we have found common ground here.
BTW, you never told us how that conversation went with Mr. Cantor. Did you get to talk to him?
Oh, When I referred to where you got the data in the above post, I was referring to the 1.7% of GDP, and not the link that you provided about military spending.
Final thought here -
If we retract money supply from the RReal economy back to the fed tsy via deficit balancing and all that, then we will force commodity prices to do what exactly ??
the anti "printers" will say that if we do NOT retract money and stop printing, then there is too much money chasing too little things > that there is inflation.
but commodities are telling a different story :
during QE 1 commodities slumped
during QE 2 commodities are supposed to be hyperinflated
remember that QE 1 "wasn't enough"
retracting Obama, healthcare, QE whatever, will put us back to a commodities slump supposedly then ??
doesn't make sense when you look at what the "hyper printing" of Wall Street's overvaluation of stocks, commodities, and house prices via all those fancy quant models. This caused inflation too.
then are we supposed to have hyper-hyper inflation if you add QE 1, QE 2, and then more Wall Street excess ?
are the Republicans really gearing up to retract the money supply in a bid to elect another "Bush 2" which will hand out stimulus checks in the guise of tax payer advocacy to smoke screen the underlining stimulus nature that they supposedly deplore so much themselves ?
Great comments Mike. You mirror my thoughts precisely.
Same breakdown. On the state level the states that spend the most per student saw those students score higher on the Academic Achievement Test (ACT).
You can try to twist your libertarian crap any way you want, it just doesn't hold up, sorry.
Mike,
You didn't refute the data I provided. What you did was claim I am wrong because you say so. That doesn't cut it. Did you even check out my link? The data doesn't dovetail with your opinion.
Off subject, but did any of you read the news that the IMF has called for a new reserve currency?
If we would have made a very large QE in the first place and let the dollar spike, then the reserve currency idea would not take root.
So the powers in the USA have two decisions :
let the reserve currency manifest or let the dollar spike and all the banks around the world fall down.
The IMF bails out countries which equate to subsidizations of foreign companies so that they can make things cheaper than we do.
I don't know, but if the IMF talks like that, they are anti-american.
All the aid the USA provides the world will be worthless, right ?
they will try to down grade our currency and debt while letting the EU and China have better credit even though China is a completely rigged system.
Egypt today > CHINA Tomorrow ?
Goog,
The IMF does offer poor countries loans that are contingent on them using the loans to finance capital investment and infrastructure spending which ends up in the pockets of companies like Halliburton, Becktel, and other transnational corporations. It's just a subsidy. It's coporatism through and through. It's a transfer of wealth to corporations that are politically connected.
Giant U.S. corporations learned this trick of pretend foreign aid starting with the Marshall Plan.
If you look at how much states spend, then you have to compare states to other countries separately. The same relationship holds. States that spend more per student see students with higher achievement test scores.
Mike,
You have moved the goal posts, but that is fine.
I found data that contradicts your assertions.
In 2009 New Jersey spent the most per pupil, but it's SAT rank was 33.
New York was second in spending per pupil, but ranked 44th on SAT scores.
Utah spent the least per pupil, and it's students ranked 20th on SAT scores.
Arizona (my place of residence) is the next lowest spending state and ranks 29th on SAT scores which was higher than the six highest spending states.
Complete data here: http://blog.bestandworst.com/2009/02/14/graduation-rates-sat-scores-and-educational-spending.aspx
I found other sources that report the same thing if you've got a problem with that source.
WWS,
You libertarians are lol.
Education is also investment, like a lot of other public investments (basic research, civil engineering projects, public health, etc. - but more correctly termed a positive public -private partnership since the private sector does some of the work through contracts. Negative public-private partnerships also occur and are usually associated with libertarian types and neoliberals.).
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/search/label/class%20size
http://pragcap.com/understanding-the-modern-monetary-system
John,
I'm not sure you can call education spending a public-private parrnership. At any rate, I'm not sure if you are well-read on economic history, but if you are I'm sure you know that public-private partnerhips originally emanated out of fascist ideology. It's the so-called third way you see.
Libertarians don't support public-private partnerhips. We understand how destructive they are.
No need for personal insults by the way. Ad hominem attacks usually point to a person not that intellectually confident or else immature. I don't go to links provided by people who don't treat others with respect.
there is no need for any bickering
it would be best that we lay arguments side by side so that MMT can be compared against Osterreichischen economiks
either way commodities will take a big hit with cheap money or consumers do when fed tsy adsorbs it back into itself
THE FED & TREASURY PROVIDE OPEN SWAP LINES TO THE GERMANS AND ECB WHILE THE GERMANS NOW WANT TO BUY UP THE NYSE EURONEXT.
IT'S WONDERFUL WHEN WE HAVE TO SELL THINGS TO THE GERMANS AND GIVE THEM FREE MONEY TO DO SO AT ZERO %
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D.Boerse, NYSE narrow in on name as talks intensify
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext may call a merged company "DB NYSE Group," according to two people close to the negotiations, though the companies said no name for what could become the world's largest exchange operator has been picked.
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