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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28007 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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A difference in what?

When states do deficit spending, they take on debt to meet the desired expenditures, they don't spend to match the debt assumed.

The distinction is that if you cut X money from the budget, it doesn't mean X more money is spent on other things. It means X less debt is assumed. That's fine and well if the debt is the difference you care about, but the argument in the current context isn't that there's a debt issue preventing more funds from being taken.

If you cut and reduce the deficit, then one time emergencies won’t hurt as much. That is, being fiscally responsible is better in bad times compared to being fiscally irresponsible.

The US is phenomenally wealthy - more so than peer developed nations. Despite this, it spend proportionally less, even after you factor out the large gap in military spending. This is a policy choice. We're not out of money. We're not brushing up against some hard upper limit of what a government can spend without wrecking the economy. We've chosen an arrangement where we get lower taxes and more consumer spending over higher taxes and more government services. This has consequences. Some of them are positive, but sometimes it's going to mean you underinvested in public services relative to the ideal case.

As I said in my other comment, it's not like Congress was forced to choose between $100b to UA and $100b to FEMA.

A difference in what?

Federal debt has exploded in recent years. That's not free.

It's also not the problem at hand. Hence why it's not making a difference to the problem at hand.

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