Balance the Budget
 

Found a great site to which members can join/or just try to balance the national budget. If we can't come back to Patsfans.com with a balanced budget, then lets not complain about our politicians who have far more barriers and special interests then we have. There are forums, resources, balance sheets, etc. on this site. Quite honestly, I think we will see a number of people cutting programs/raising taxes which they were originally opposed.

Balance the Budget

It's not that easy, but I know there are some fairly smart individuals in here who will have some fun with this.

Re: Balance the Budget
 

Nice site, but there is difficulty as the names are not familiar..

Some of the options are not available, i.e. take away the Bush tax cuts etc.

Re: Balance the Budget
 

I don't know what the $$ would be, but I would also make these cuts and moves:
Eliminate the war on drugs
Eliminate Homeland Security
Reduce the number of people in prisons for non-violent crimes
Leave Education up to each state
Get out of the Mail business
Cut National Defense:
-reduce our presence in Germany, Japan, Iran, and Afghanistan.
Our defense is 46.5% of the world's distribution, China is second with 6.6% (gee, I wonder how they have become so productive). Cold war is over boys, time to get real.
Social Security: Increase the age limit. Tax exempt groups. Tax corporations.
Put the tax rate for the rich back to where it was prior to the Bush tax cuts. The middle class is what drives the economy, not the trickle down theory. Common sense indicates that a multiplier effect is more dramatic when it is used by people who are in need versus people that do not have to spend. The multiplier effect is the engine for the economy.

Re: Balance the Budget
 

Do not disagree with most of the above, but you will find a lot of issues with the Post Office as it is constitutionally mandated...

You also need to look at how we subsidize agriculture and our multinational tax systems.. i.e. why GE, EXXON and many of the others who paid not taxes this year..

Re: Balance the Budget
 

PolitiFact | Bernie Sanders says ExxonMobil paid no taxes in 2009, but that's inaccurate

Re: Balance the Budget
 

Thanks for playing..

GE, Exxon and many of the multinational companies are paying theif fair share, and we should just keep on keeping on.. no need to change a tax structure..

GE has something like 970 tax folks who do nothing but figure out how to beat the tax system.. that is a lot of people. GE is good.

Re: Balance the Budget
 

Interesting site, it will be fun to play around there.

The model has many limitations it is an adding machine. The economy is a non linear chaotic system.


As far as I can see it makes no allowances for The effect of interest changes on the $$$ servicing the national debt. The effect of changing tax rates on economic behavior. The effect of changes in growth/contraction of the GDP. All these things have a big impact on the deficit and debt.

Also it becomes hard to balance the budget in 1 year given the rapid expansion of spending combined with the negative/slow economic growth.

Re: Balance the Budget
 

I was hoping that we could come to some type of conclusion of how to balance the budget. My belief is that you help the middle class. I do not believe in the trickle down theory. The multiplier effect is the engine. Why give tax breaks to the wealthy and they have the option whether to use the income from those breaks. OTH, the middle class NEEDS to pay bills and purchase goods and services. Those goods are not luxury items, thus, the multiplier effect is used as its name implies.
I do not believe in any price ceilings, floors, tariffs, and limited subsidies. The farm subsidies are a joke. From the word "go", we will pay you for not planting. Minimum wage hurts the people it is supposed to help. Tariffs only hurt free trade.
The war on poverty has failed. It was enacted during the Johnson administration. How's that working out? Corporate welfare needs to be done away with. GE's profit was 14 billion? They had roughly 23,000 pages for an IRS filing, and no, they did not pay taxes.

Re: Balance the Budget
 

It depends on who will make best use of the resources of the society, distributed individuals making decisions (ie the market) or central planners confiscating resources from others they did not create and using them as they see fit.

This doesn't work, never has worked and can never work. No one can predict where the next great idea will come from.

Growing the economy will control the GROWTH of resources. The problem is that some see a limited pie and are focused on how the pie will be divided. Others understand that the pie is not static by can and will grow if the resources are left with those who know who to grow the resources.

This is what VonMises, and Hayek understood that Marx and Engels did not.

Re: Balance the Budget
 

Make the best use of the resources? Today, people need money to put food on the table, buy medicine, and pay for their mortgage. When they do that, it multiplier effect is at its greatest value. That, versus a "central planner" using the money as they see fit? This is about middle class having the tax break to pay for necessities versus the wealthy having a tax break to decide what they might do with it.