Commentary: Time to let private sector get back to work

[unhappycamper]

Commentary: Time to let private sector get back to work
By Frida Ghitis | Miami Herald
Posted on Tuesday, July 6, 2010

If we ran our family budgets the way the federal government runs the national budget, we would end up bankrupt. That's the argument from critics in the United States and Europe, rightly horrified by mountains of debt of a size our brains can scarcely comprehend.

The problem with that line of thinking is that the national economy and our home budgets are two completely different operations.

In fact, if we ran the federal budget today the way one runs a responsible family budget, we might just send the economy into a catastrophic tailspin. That's particularly true at this moment, when the United States and, indeed, the global economy have barely managed to climb out of the abyss.

We should certainly worry about the size of the deficit and about how much money the United States - American taxpayers - owes its creditors. For just this year the deficit will exceed $1.5 trillion. If you add the deficits accumulated over the years, all the money the federal government has borrowed, pays interest on and must repay, that number totals a breath-taking $13 trillion. No calculator I own has enough digits to write it: 13,000,000,000,000. The rounding excess I've left out is larger than many countries' annual expenditures. If you spent a million dollars every day it would take more than 35,000 years to accumulate expenditures of this size. The Treasury says that America owes almost a trillion dollars to China and about $250 million to a group it calls "Oil Exporters," which includes the likes of Saudi Arabia, Libya and Venezuela.

This seemingly insurmountable debt and its geopolitical and economic consequences unquestionably are reason for profound worry. We must take action to slash the annual deficits and start bringing down the debt. That's not just the view of patriotically attired tea partiers or fiscally conservative Republicans. Everyone agrees that a reckoning awaits us, as it does every Western economy that has spent far beyond its means.



unhappycamper comment: The low hanging fruit of the United States annual military budget is now under 'attack'. Methinks the days of $5+ billion dollar destroyers and $40 billion dollar aircraft carriers are coming to an end. Thankfully.

[Birthmark]

1. Where were these horse's asses...

...when Bush busted the budget by cutting taxes irresponsibly? Oh, yeah. Counting their deficit-funded money. Had that tax cut not occurred, we could have handled this economic downturn with relative ease. So you'll excuse me if I think Frida Ghitis is more concerned with politics than policy.

And have these dumb asses never read about the Great Depression? Cutting the budget now is about most stupid thing we can do...unless one is a fan of Great Depressions, of course.

[sendero]

2. Exactly..

.... its the obverse of the Laffer curve, only it is real. If the govt stops the stimulus before the economy has actually begun to recover, we will slip into a real depression and no one wins.

I'm against debt as much as the next person but when you've wasted TRILLIONS propping up zombie banks, a few billion to keep unemployment checks coming is hardly profligate.

[mmonk]

3. Slashing budgets at this time will not bring back private sector jobs

and further contracts the economy. I'm all for slashing the MIC spending on imperialism in any economy since it is out of proportion, however, the ideology that this is when you slash domestic budgets to improve the economy proves to be a fallacy. If smaller domestic government services (less money spent for the people) combined with tax cuts at the top created jobs, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in.

[KharmaTrain]

4. And How Did We Get Here???

Yes, the defecits are a big problem, especially when a country is broke...not just the government but most of its people and many of its businesses. We're flushing away a billions on wars for profit (and little else), protecting the "too big to fails" and feeding a corporate welfare system that you rarely hear about.

Not all defecits are bad as that money has to go to somewhere...and if the spending went to create jobs and give American businesses a break, that'd be another story. However this administration continues the disastrous policies of the past that are a boat anchor on most wage earners out there and why unemployment rates remain so high. Sadly if there's gonna be cuts it's out of domestic spending; hurting those who need the help the most and prolonging this recession/depression.

Now we're seeing voters either ready to elect the party that ruined the economy for the past 30 years or are so mad at this administration they're gonna vote third party or stay home. AFAIK, I have no problems stiffing the Chinese and Saudis...they've made enough off exploiting our weakness to cheap oil and consumer goods.

[SocialistLez]

6. Amen!

"..and if the spending went to create jobs and give American businesses a break, that'd be another story. However this administration continues the disastrous policies of the past that are a boat anchor on most wage earners out there and why unemployment rates remain so high. Sadly if there's gonna be cuts it's out of domestic spending; hurting those who need the help the most and prolonging this recession/depression."

:applause: :applause:

[EstimatedProphet]

5. News Flash: the Federal government budget is not a family budget

Wishing and hoping it works the same way won't make it that way either. If we ran our family budgets the way the federal government runs the national budget, we would end up bankrupt is like saying that if we drove our cars like NASA ran the Apollo Project, we could drive to the moon.