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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> What would you cut?

Were I concerned about fiscal balance, I wouldn't view cutting as the best way to solve the problem, I would raise high-end taxes.

> I do know that the United States is heading for a financial apocalypse unless drastic measures are taken now.

Insofar as that’s true, it is a direct result of the actions taking thus far this administration, not something they are correcting—and not through fiscal imbalance causing wider problems but by a broad economic collapse directly (which, because the broad economy drives revenue, has fiscal balance problems as a second order impact.)

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It's worth noting that this "financial crisis" (which I disagree with) has been brought on by Republican governments. Bill Clinton left a budget surplus which is the easiest way to pay down the debt.

Secondly, if I had to cut something, the obvious target is the military. (Oh boy, ring on the downvotes there...) But hear me out.

Firstly, the adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq cost more than the current debt. With pretty much zero achieved. Focusing less on projecting power, and more on self-defense might deliver better returns.

Of course the military budget can't (and wont) be cut because it's not about the military. It's a carefully controlled jobs program that moves money from the federal piggy bank to pretty much every district in the nation. So it becomes a game of "cut x, but not y, because y is made in my district. It's easier to cut less-specific programs (like Medicare) because that isn't district specific.

Then again maybe the tide has turned, and they could cut military spending. The CHIPS act funneled tons of money to Florida and yet Floridians hated it.

Thanks to you and GP for a reasoned response. Appropriately taxing the wealthy is 100% something we also need to do and yes, I am skeptical that the current administration will move in that direction. Ditto cuts to the monstrous military industrial complex.

I think I’ll refrain from responding to the more inflammatory replies but what really sounded the financial alarm for me personally was this talk [1] given to the house on February 5th by Arizona rep David Schweikert. He makes a really compelling case about the dire state and future of the government’s financial position. If indeed I have been hoodwinked as other comments seem to think, I am open to being convinced otherwise. But this talk is well documented, and seems like a plea from a man who is desperate to sound the alarm so we can prevent disastrous consequences for millions of people in this country.

[1] https://youtu.be/TCyysMU66VA?si=Fjhx2xgYZ0upkxeo

Alas I can't watch the YT link right now, so I can't comment on that.

However I will point out that the goal of the current "effeciency drive" has nothing to do with the deficit. I confidently predict that the deficit will be larger, not smaller, at the end of this administration. Primarily driven by tax cuts on the aristocracy.

While personally I don't think the deficit number is terribly concerning (it behaves very differently to personal debt) its interesting to note that Republicans, not Democrats are responsible for most of it.

Talk of "financial alarm" for a government with monetary sovereignty is specious. It will mislead you into analyzing government finances as if they were household finances, whereas governments use newly created money rather than going bankrupt. And for our government, this really just means less newly created money going directly into private pockets.

It's only this martingale of the "Federal Reserve" neutering the government's own monetary sovereignty that has even allowed for this "debt" narrative. The part of government debt that is owed to private parties is essentially savings accounts for institutions and other countries who believe that USD will hold future value better than other assets. The other part of the government debt that is owed to a different branch of government (Federal Reserve) is nothing more than a sham accounting measure to support the political martingale.

The actual threat is the global demonetization of the US dollar because the US is no longer in a leadership position when all of our industrial, scientific, military, foreign outreach, law enforcement, etc institutions have been destroyed. It won't matter whether the "budget" is balanced if/when foreign countries are offloading US Treasuries. That's the real threat, and "our" "leadership" is now in the process of outright facilitating that destruction.

I think the "hoodwinking" is about the immediacy of the problem, rather than whether it exists or not. Most of the current rhetoric and "efficiency" actions are centered around this idea that we're rapidly approach some near term fiscal cliff that requires action that's drastic in the temporal sense to avoid disaster. No time thinking things through or even following the law, it's a five alarm emergency that requires immediate action! This is where you get ideas like randomly firing new government employees before you even figure out what they do just because they're easier to fire. It doesn't save much money and has a lot of downsides and might not even be legal, but when time is of the essence you could maybe squint and see the argument.

But the reality is that time is not of the essence. Infinitely growing government debt does seem kind of unsuistainble long term, but the scale of the debt combined with the lack of any specific immediate forcing function would seem to favor actions that are drastic in scale but that can be spread over time. In other words the government needs to significantly increase revenue and/or decrease spending, but it doesn't need to do it tomorrow. It's nearly the complete opposite of what's going on now, where making cuts yesterday is considered vastly more important than actually getting to a place where spending and revenue are aligned long term.

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