US Budget Simulator

[Siege]

reduce the government employment by 70%

Including the military?

eliminate corporate welfare

What do you mean by this?

Do liberals consider the military to be government employees when they think or talk about how good government expansion is???
When they expand the government, do they expand or reduce the military?
Do they behave like we are their peers or their enemies?

[Admiral Yi]

If your policy positions are going to be determined by opposition to whatever liberals favor, then you can't be opposed to "corporate welfare."

[Valmy]

I want to expand the NSA.  It is nice to finally have a segment of the Federal Government that really listens to the people.

[Eddie Teach]

I laughed.

[CountDeMoney]

I want to expand the NSA.  It is nice to finally have a segment of the Federal Government that really listens to the people.

If people truly knew what goes on inside the Federal government, the type of people who work there and how the entire government process works, there would be substantially less things for the average US citizen to worry about.

[The Minsky Moment]

But I'll tell you (by which I mainly mean Joan) what, if a proper Keynesian stimulus were to lift us back into full employment and raised growth rates, I'd admit I was wrong.

Growth rates have recovered and unemployment rates have declined very steadily.
The recovery has been OK considering we had the worst crash since the 30s and taking into account the premature panic into fiscal consolidation a few years back.

To the extent there is an argument to be made about long-term weakened growth prospects, some variant on the Gordon/Cowan/Summers/Krugman stagnation hypothesis is more persuasive IMO than the opposite hypothesis that the problem is *too much* innovation.

[The Minsky Moment]

If not automation, whence stagnant wages for the past 30 years?  The value of labor has declined, but why?  Retrenchment of capital; women (re)entering the workforce after the Golden Age of the Middle Class, as social order lagged behind, spelling the end of single-income households; immigrants; effective immigrants in the form of global industrialization--are those factors sufficient to explain it?  Perhaps.

Plus globalization, the rise of Asian developing economy industry, weakened unions, changes in tax code, changes in competition policy, vast relative expansion of financial services sector . . .

Not exactly lacking in pathways for potential alternate causation here.

[Syt]

Surely you're not suggesting that a change or lack thereof in society might have more than one singular cause?