Musk says he can cut 2 trillion from the budget

[hawkeyetraveler]

I'm not under the impression that government spending is efficient.
Couple that with the fact that printing money to spend inefficiently makes us even worse of, cutting a lot of it will make us better off.

Government doesn't blink at spending like this (monthly rates, btw):

Somebody else's money.
Who cares.
Job is to get it spent.
All of it.
Every year.

Oh I agree with you we have incredible waste in federal spending. I am all for eliminating as much as possible.

My point was we can’t actually get to a point where spending is less than revenue until we cut back on “untouchables” like military spending and social security. As I said above, even if we eliminate ALL discretionary spending we are still nearly a trillion dollars short of balancing the budget.

Given that politicians will never actually fix this we will eventually have to print money, devalue the dollar and enter into a hyper inflationary cycle. The only question is whether that is in 5 years, 10 years or 20 years.

Baby boomers should be getting less social security right now, but they care more about themselves than their grand children.

 

[seminole97]

Oh I agree with you we have incredible waste in federal spending. I am all for eliminating as much as possible.

My point was we can’t actually get to a point where spending is less than revenue until we cut back on “untouchables” like military spending and social security.

Social Security is a red herring in this context. It is funded by payroll taxes, and does not add to the deficit.
Those taxes are insufficient to pay promised benefits after 2034 (taxes will generate ~77% of payouts), but existing law stipulates SS can't draw funding from elsewhere. So you means test it for the people who don't need welfare. The elderly are already the richest cohort, many of them won't need it.
Welfare for everyone doesn't work, trying to make it work will just make us worse off.

We can't afford the empire. We'll be better off when our taxes aren't turned into smoke on the other side of the world.

Given that politicians will never actually fix this we will eventually have to print money, devalue the dollar and enter into a hyper inflationary cycle. The only question is whether that is in 5 years, 10 years or 20 years.

If you haven't already, start saving in bitcoin now.
Hard money will maintain value if the politicians completely lose their minds.

"We can guarantee cash payments from here on out, what we cannot guarantee is the purchasing power of that cash." -Alan Greenspan during remarks on Social Security, Feb 16, 2005

 

[Joes Place]

You can debate the top 1% with the IRS.

I looked it up.

You don't seem terribly interested in facts.

 

[DFSNOLE]

Baby boomers should be getting less social security right now, but they care more about themselves than their grand children.

Well, that's just mean.

 

[DFSNOLE]

I looked it up.

You don't seem terribly interested in facts.

That's why none of Ryan's handles actually cite sources. They just make up crap to support their premises.

 

[seminole97]

An important thing to remember is that when the government quits spending money, the money doesn’t disappear.
The money is just not being squandered by bureaucrats anymore.
When less of the economic output of this country is deliberately consumed so that bureaucrats can meet their performance measures of spending their allocation, we’ll be better off.

 

[hawkeyetraveler]

Well, that's just mean.

A little sure, but if we want to extend the life of social security why don’t all generations have to pay the price?

 

[seminole97]