U.S. government budget ends fiscal year with a more than $3T deficit | Hacker News Reader

U.S. government budget ends fiscal year with a more than $3T deficit

cnbc.com

25 pointswhack30 comments

The proposed new Covid relief doesn't hold out much hope for next year, either.

I mean, look, if people can't work temporarily, you can't let that destroy the economy. You have to get them through, and you have to have an economy for them to come back to. But you can also cause problems by building up too much government debt. (I don't know what the right answer is, but I see lots of problems...)

> But you can also cause problems by building up too much government debt.

You probably can, but even with another year of 3T deficit I think the net debt (I can't find good figure on that for the last few years) would be under 100% of GDP, which looking at history doesn't really seem likely to be any kind of giant problem in and of itself, even though gross debt being over 100% seems to be an intuitive scare threshold.

Well we never will be able to tax our way out of it, there isn't enough wealth and you could confiscate all the wealth of every billionaire and fall ridiculously short.

the only out is to restrict spending. We don't actually have to cut anything even though we should. Hope budget increases below inflation as much as possible. Other countries have done it, why can't we? This means that programs that automatic increases built in don't get them if it pushes the budge past the limit.

This is not austerity, this is returning to proper budgeting where we don't use baseline budgeting which is how Congress lies to the American people with claims a program has been reduced.

> Well we never will be able to tax our way out of it, there isn't enough wealth and you could confiscate all the wealth of every billionaire and fall ridiculously short.

Why would you try to pay off the national debt with a one-time wealth tax (whether restricted to billionaires or not)? That would be stupid.

> the only out is to restrict spending.

Or grow the economy over the long term, make service payments, and not worry about a grand payoff because what would even be the point of that?

We waste so much money on initiatives and social programs that can be administered much more sensibly and cheaply by local communities. Community leaders can custom-tailor their approach to what their community needs, instead of a blanket, one-size-fits-all nationwide programs that waste money.

Many of them could be run as community charities or even profitable businesses, if national government would just get out of the way and let innovation work its magic!

And I mean well-intentioned, but wasteful programs like:

- libraries (partner with publishers instead!)

- grand-making arts programs

- mandatory Common Core preschools (instilling a dislike of education from a young age!)

- programs for reduced-cost and free lunches (just use surplus food that already exists!)

- community colleges (can be run for profit)

- job retraining programs (we already have technical schools!)

- public health and drug rehab (pharma companies can step-up instead)

- national parks and wildlife preservation (why not let the market decide which ones are worth it?)

Suddenly, we'll have taken a big bite out of our unsustainable debt!

The issue with the US system is that 99% of local actions are unsustainable. Everything is federal or nothing, even at the state level you end up socialising losses and privatising gains. .

So is it worth having any of these things at all, or are they inevitably a net negative in the long run anyway?

I think it is worth having them - not sure that going for-profit on those is a healthy thing

Why not just change the system. The US is about the only place on earth with this weird system forcing every town and county and city and state to compete. It doesn't seem to work. No one seems to have designed it, it just turned out like this.

I'm getting bombarded with articles about people fleeing high tax states with out of control, ineffective govts. Can you explain which part isn't working? i've been under the assumption that state competition is one of the best parts about the US.

Well... Healthcare, education, social work and infrastructure are all failing in the US for this specific reason. Don't get me wrong, maybe that's how the US likes it? I'm a brit, it's not my business how you run your country.

I was just saying, when you said these things should be done voluntary by local groups, that doesnt work because it's designed not to because that's how the US is.

It's great for lower taxes and as long as that is the o ly thing that you care about, you're golden!

No, that was deliberate. Governments aren't omniscient. If a government is bad, stupid, or just mistaken in what the right policy is, it's better if that doesn't affect the whole country. And if there's another state right beside it that does better, the first state can see that other policies work better and might get their act together.

But if it was the federal government, it would affect everyone, not just one state. Also, there wouldn't be 50 examples for them to pick the best from. (There are other countries, but their circumstances tend to vary more than the circumstances between states, so it's easier for naysayer to argue that the example doesn't really apply.)

"To a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. An internet forum like HN can't do anything interesting with that—it just turns into tedious, nasty flamewar.

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