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Comment by ebaysucks | Hacker News Reader

"One might think that the recent drama over the debt ceiling involved one side wanting to increase or maintain spending with the other side wanting to drastically cut spending, but that is far from the truth. In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase. No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the cuts being discussed are illusory and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in prospective spending increases. This is akin to a family saving $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda."

Quote from http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-07-31/ron-paul-freeze-the-budget...

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Please, no more family analogies. This metaphorical family can't increase their income by taxing better off families and most families don't have such a debilitating, unnecessary monthly payment like numerous wars to pay off.

True, but there are real families that incease their income by robbing better off families, and there are many families who use all sorts of justifications to avoid paying for things, including all of their taxes, so they can afford other things. Just because a family can't pass a law to sanction that behavior, doesn't mean the behavior isn't comparable to the government's.

> True, but there are real families that incease their income by robbing better off families

If you consider taxation theft, then yes.

I don't. I was merely stating a fact that families have means to increase income taking from the rich just like the government does. That's not to say theft and taxation aren't in the same ballpark. If the IRS demanded 80% of your income without a change to the tax code, what would you call it?

The analogy still works. Don't let taxes and wars confuse you. Both entities have limits to both the amount of revenue they take in and and the expenditures they make.

It's oversimplification. Getting in and out of a war isn't as easy as stopping pizza night on Fridays. And the mechanism of raising tax rates isn't similar to asking for and getting a raise from Father's boss.

Agreed. I think it was Boehner who compared the US debt situation to a household. These comparisons are like comparing a 747 to a Hotwheels car, and not just useless in most cases but damaging in the sense they cloud the more complex bigger picture.

No, a 747 actually provides a useful, reliable service for the average American, and the owner of it (excl. Air Force 1) doesn't threaten violence if you don't help pay for it. Stick with the car theme. Maybe the government is a stretched Hummer that needs a year's worth of income to get it out of the shop. OK, maybe Halliburton will accept half a year's income to fix it.

Ron Paul follows the Austrian school of economics. They believe that economics cannot be mathematically or statistically modeled, and the economic theories cannot be tested experimentally.

Family analogies are probably the best you are going to get for "analysis" from these people.

They believe law and economics i.e. human action is a field of logic.

They don't say you can not model the economy, they do say whatever correlations occur in your models can not invalidate logical necessities.

"They believe that economics cannot be mathematically or statistically modeled"

It can be modeled, the models just won't be predictive when applied to reality because it's impossible to control for variables in such a complex system. Mathematics and statistics can be used effectively in economic analysis, but the majority of what's produced (and that our government uses for guidance) succumbs to correlation/causation fallacies.

Economics is not science. It's theory. Economic theories are not testable. Trying to give one's work the impression of credibility through misapplied scientific language and methods is called pseudoscience, and its purpose is to mislead.

That isn't exactly accurate either. Given our current policies spending will be X. This deal reduces spending below X.

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