
Washington will spend $31,406 per household this year vs. $18,276 in taxes - robg
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/washington-will-spend-31406-per-household-this-year/1086283
======
jcnnghm
It's a shame that government spending is decoupled from tax collection. By
requiring employers to withhold and make estimated tax payments for employees,
employees are unable to quantify the magnitude of taxes. If the average family
in the country had to write a check for $18,276 to the federal government each
year, people would start demanding a reduction in spending.

~~~
rbranson
This is the way most businesses operate. In reality, businesses often have to
spend their way out of losses with innovative R&D and marketing. The fact that
credit exists smooths out the ups and downs in revenues is a good thing.
Imagine the long-term cost of winding down government services, just to have
to wind them up again? There are huge ramping costs to take into
consideration, not to mention the impact on the economy. While I agree that
government spending is a little ridiculous at times, breaking it down into
simplistic terms ignores the vast tasks that even a stripped down federal
government must undertake.

Also, because of the way most people spend money in reality, the government
would go broke if they tried to collect taxes without witholding. Sad but
true.

~~~
jcnnghm
_This is the way most businesses operate. In reality, businesses often have to
spend their way out of losses with innovative R &D and marketing. The fact
that credit exists smooths out the ups and downs in revenues is a good thing._

My comment wasn't related to this, but you're missing a big difference. If a
business doesn't get there finances straightened out, they go under. If a
business is wasting their money on stupid consulting projects causing their
prices to rise, you can stop buying their products. You can't do that with the
government.

 _Imagine the long-term cost of winding down government services, just to have
to wind them up again? There are huge ramping costs to take into
consideration, not to mention the impact on the economy. While I agree that
government spending is a little ridiculous at times, breaking it down into
simplistic terms ignores the vast tasks that even a stripped down federal
government must undertake._

You're assuming that it's desirable to ramp them back up. I am totally
comfortable doing away with Social Security and Medicare, lowering defense
spending back to $3599 from $6071, drastically cutting anti-poverty programs
so that everyone has to work to survive, and using the surpluses created by
those reductions to pay down the federal debt to eliminate the interest
expense. I'd also be for moving the Education and Mass Transit taxes back to
the states so a bunch of stupid restrictions don't have to be met, like the
65mph speed limit and No Child Left Behind. While at it, we should drastically
reduce our health research funding since the US represents 81% of global
health R&D spending, and eliminate future federal employee retirement
benefits. The mortgage credits can take a hike as well.

 _Also, because of the way most people spend money in reality, the government
would go broke if they tried to collect taxes without witholding. Sad but
true._

That's a feature, not a bug. If the average family had to write a check for
$1,523 every month, it wouldn't be long before everyone was demanding
accountability and cost reductions, instead of more services.

------
ojbyrne
If you believe in Keynesian economics (many people still do), that's exactly
what they should be doing. To quote wikipedia:

"Keynes′ theory suggested that active government policy could be effective in
managing the economy. Rather than seeing unbalanced government budgets as
wrong, Keynes advocated what has been called countercyclical fiscal policies,
that is policies which acted against the tide of the business cycle: deficit
spending when a nation's economy suffers from recession or when recovery is
long-delayed and unemployment is persistently high—and the suppression of
inflation in boom times by either increasing taxes or cutting back on
government outlays."

You can make an argument about whether that's a valid theory or not, but
saying spending more than you're taking is just plain bad, isn't really much
of an argument.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics#Active_fisc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics#Active_fiscal_policy)

~~~
SamAtt
Yes and No. I don't disagree with the definition but inherent in Keynesian
economics is the idea that you shouldn't spend dramatically more than you can
compensate for through taxation once the economy recovers. So while Keynesian
theories might justify spending the question here is whether too much is being
spent and that's not one that is really addressed in the theories themselves

------
GFischer
Maybe they will just print the deficit and devalue your currency, effectively
taxing you anyway (you WISH your children would end up paying this - though
they will, in part)

They love doing that in my third world country (they recently introduced the $
2000 bill, when the old $ 1000 bill was the highest denomination previously,
and the $ 5000 bill has already been printed and awaiting introduction), and
the US has rediscovered it as well.

~~~
cynicalkane
Except that Congress lacks the power to do such a thing. The Fed has that
power, but no incentive. In fact, the amount of printed currency in
circulation has been holding steady for the last year, so money is not being
"printed". I wish the printing money conspiracy theory would go away.

Edit: Changed 'money in circulation' to 'printed currency in circulation'. I
think it should be obvious from the rest of the post as well as the context
that I'm talking about printing money, but apparently my use of the word
"printed" wasn't enough to convince people, so I added another use of the
word.

~~~
watchandwait
The Fed "prints" because it is buying mortgage and Treasury assets with magic
new currency. Yes, the new cash is being hoarded as bank reserves and it is
not in circulation (yet), but you can be sure it is newly printed money.

~~~
cynicalkane
I'm aware of the expansion of reserves. My objection is twofold:

1) Don't say "printing money". It's not printing money. The Fed does something
called printing money, and this ain't it. Don't even say "printing money" in
an obtuse metaphorical fashion, since everyone who isn't aware of the current
state of the Fed's balance sheet, including many people on HN, will
misunderstand.

2) I doubt most of the newly created Federal reserve liabilities will ever see
circulation. Remember, the Fed is controlled by people who do _not_ want
inflation to happen. Many top economists--notably Volcker, chairman of the
Economic Recovery Advisory Board--would rather see a prolonged recession than
inflation (cf.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Volcker#Chairman_of_the_Fe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Volcker#Chairman_of_the_Federal_Reserve)).
Printing money to erase debts would inspire an economic revolt by just about
everyone that isn't Congress.

------
gjm11
Some interesting information, but I could have done without all the spin. (Oh
look, surprise surprise, the author works for a conservative think tank.)

~~~
billybob
Where is the spin? I didn't see it. Did he mis-state any facts, or leave out
something important?

The author clearly has an agenda, but his opinionated-sounding statements (for
instance, that this debt will be 'dumped in the laps of our children') are
factual: these bills will come due. The statement that taxpayers have to
decide if they're getting their money's worth is nearly axiomatic.

Really, just the bare statement in the title, "Washington will spend $31,406
per household this year," is staggering. Call it spin if you will, but holy
crap - that's about 80 percent of the average person's total earnings.

How many people would really say "I'm willing to give 80 percent of my income
to the federal government, and some more to the state government?"

~~~
maukdaddy
It is an opinion article, written by the Heritage Foundation.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation>

~~~
billybob
Ad hominem. Do you have any valid arguments?

~~~
dgabriel
I don't think identifying the source is exactly an ad hominem. I'm pretty sure
you have to attack the source as unreliable or somehow bad. Understanding that
the source is conservative can be helpful in understanding biases within the
article itself.

Note that it contains no sources or methods for evaluating the true or
falseness of its claims, nor can we be sure about the broad categories the
author presents. Without that information, taking such a list at face value
seems like a bad idea.

~~~
SamAtt
The source is the U.S. budget itself and that's not hard to verify (harder
than it should be but still). The categories again could be verified simply by
looking at the budget yourself.

Any information could be untrustworthy and every author has a bias no matter
how hard they try not to. The problem with your statement is that you're
assuming an inherent falseness based on the authors' political stance and
that's an ad hominem.

~~~
dgabriel
No, I'm not assuming anything (perhaps you are referring to a different
comment). I'm asking for baseline substantiation and citation. Simply this -
be aware of the biases of the material you read, and be skeptical of anything
that boils something as complex as the budget into a bulleted list. Especially
if that list is packaged up as a press release. I would say the same if ACORN
released a list like this.

~~~
SamAtt
I can see your comments in the context you put them in here but keep in mind
that there's an overall discussion which was a reply to the original comment
which accused the article of "spin" and attributed it in a derogatory manner
to the article being written by a conservative. So I took your comment to be
supporting that point.

------
applicative
"The remaining $13,130 represents this year's staggering budget deficit per
household, which, along with all prior government debt, will be dumped in the
laps of our children"

It's strange these wind-bag budget pseudo-hawks suddenly emerge with
Democratic presidents. How much of these -- the figures are from the palpably
dishonest writer -- are not due to Bush's wars and recession?

    
    
      Antipoverty programs: $5,466
      Interest on the federal debt: $1,585
      Unemployment benefits: $1,640
      Defense: $6,071.
      -----
      Total: $14,802
    

People who supported the Bush madness should just be precluded from commenting
on these matters.

~~~
gaius
OK, but if your government is going to spend money at all, defence isn't a bad
way to do it. You get lots of jobs directly and indirectly, you pay for the
development of lots of interesting tech that has civilian/commercial
applications (i.e. you are _creating wealth_ ), and you get the defence of the
realm "for free" on top of all that! (Esp. if you have no wars on,
admittedly).

Whereas those other programmes you mention, regardless of any other merits
they may have, constitute paying people to _not_ create any value. Which seems
a bit of a weird way to spend the taxpayer's money.

~~~
jfoutz
Defense spending for the sake of having a big army is a waste. Weapons don't
create resources. Weapons help the exchange of resources, enabling the full
spectrum of trade, from don't take my stuff! all the way to give me all your
stuff! but sticking mostly to reasonable trades.

The value from defense spending came from darpa or specialized research
projects by the various branches of DoD. It's a pretty small fraction in
relation to total spending. darpa itself is about .5% of defense spending.

Building that first stealth bomber is really cool, it drives a ton of
innovation and research. building the 12th one doesn't do a whole lot for the
economy. It seems to take a bridges worth of taxes and park it on a runway in
saudi arabia.

social spending is weird. there are homeless folks in town that rack up 300k
emergency medical bills from, well, living on the street. it would be a lot
cheaper just to rent them an apartment and hand over a case of beer every day.
The big win of social security, it's way cheaper to give someone who couldn't
work more than an hour a day 6k/year to heat their house and feed themselves.
way cheaper than nursing homes or whatever.

fwiw, medicare and medicaid pay fixed amounts, making more money means being
more efficient. a lot of the private hospital profitability comes from meeting
federal requirements more efficiently every year.

~~~
gaius
But the nth stealth bomber includes 1/n of the development cost of the 1st.

------
maukdaddy
oh come on! This is an OPINION PIECE, written by the Heritage Foundation,
which is a CONSERVATIVE THINK TANK.

How about some disclosure on HN?

~~~
billybob
Are the numbers opinionated?

~~~
dgabriel
Are the numbers cited and substantiated?

------
mark_l_watson
I think that the article was largely factual except the amount of defense
spending quoted in the article seems really low. Some (or a lot) of defense
spending is non-essential (depending on your view of which is the greater
threat: war/terrorism or a collapsing economy with an ensuing "Road Warrior"
life style). I think that it would be more honest to add interest costs to all
spending that is not absolutely required to "keep the lights on."

