

If the US Government used personal finance software - ry0ohki
http://budgetsimple.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/the-us-government-budget-in-budgetsimple/

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adestefan
That's not a budget, that's a cash flow statement. Budgets are expected income
and expected expenses.

The problem with the US budget is that income is down and they always lie
about expenses. The income is down because every budget show rosy projections
for the economy which means they expect a larger tax base ("Unemployment is
going to magically drop 3% in less than a year!") The expenses are higher
because they add more all the time without paying for it ("Oh we need to do X,
what's a couple million on top of a trillion anyway.")

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woodall
This isn't an article about the US using budgeting software. It's swipe at
war/military spending. It would have been nice to see an unbiased and full
feature article on this.

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ry0ohki
I'm really not biased about this (I'm very apolitical), it's just clear when
you lay it out like this that the main discretionary spending that needs to be
cut to get a balanced budget is what they classify as "Security". Stealth
bombers and other fancy things are nice but it's clear we can't actually
afford them at this point.

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protomyth
There is a pretty good case based on how many times money changes hands that
the "Stealth Bomber" is a pretty good economic stimulant.

Two things: First, The US pretty much hovers between 15 - 20% of GDP being
brought in as revenue for the federal government. This is despite a lot of tax
policy changes.

Second, when Clinton did his defense cuts, one of the things cut was various
supply buying from small contractors (mostly minority). We had two factories.
One lost all its contracts (although it did stay open just a little longer to
ship tents to Florida after a hurricane). The other lost half its workers. All
the people who these people bought stuff from had hard times. Of course,
welfare spending went up in the area. The plans to move into civilian supply
never got off the ground. Welfare doesn't make as many hops through the
economy as defense spending.

Target spending cuts based on what happens to the money afterwards.

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Afton
> Welfare doesn't make as many hops through the economy as defense spending.

What does that mean?

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protomyth
Sorry, should have given references. The concept is called velocity of money
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money>

Although, I learned a slightly different definition than the wikipedia
article. When I saw the studies, it was defined as "Number of different
players a $ changed hands from before returning to the government". The study
I saw said each $ spent on defense made 12 jumps, where each $ spent on
welfare made 7 jumps.

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Afton
thanks. Interesting idea.

