Dimmer you are in or near Madison correct?
The past 2 weeks I have crisscrossed your state a few times, and I noticed a few interesting anecdotes about this recall process.
In Madison and the immediate suburban areas, Recall Walker signs every where, once you get to the rural south western corner of the state, a ton of NO Recall. But once you are an hour out of Madison in either direction you see nothing.
I asked some folks in the Milwaukee area and it was met with apathy same in green bay.
If my small inaccurate, waste of time, sample is indicative of the population of you cheese heads will that play apart in anything going down?
If the line is purchased this time, it will be with state money.
Actually, you could look at that as a highly principled person, refusing money from the Federal government because he knows it's all debt-based, and doesn't want to put the load of paying it back on people who aren't even born yet. If Wisconsin is buying the line outright, without incurring debt to do it, that's overall better for the country than taking borrowed money from the Feds. It's worse for Wisconsin, but keeping the cost local for a local benefit is much more honest.
If Wisconsin borrows the money, well, then it's kind of stupid. There's the slim justification that you know nobody's going to be printing money to pay it back, but that's ... tenuous.
I suspect it was actually just partisan politics, him refusing anything to do with it because it was Obama's idea, but that's not the only possible explanation. It really depends on where the funding comes from.
Actually, you could look at that as a highly principled person, refusing money from the Federal government because he knows it's all debt-based, and doesn't want to put the load of paying it back on people who aren't even born yet. If Wisconsin is buying the line outright, without incurring debt to do it, that's overall better for the country than taking borrowed money from the Feds. It's worse for Wisconsin, but keeping the cost local for a local benefit is much more honest.
The President's budget proposal for 2012 put Transportation Department surface transportation funds into a PAYGO status, which would have prevented them from being funded by borrowing.
The President's budget proposal for 2012 put Transportation Department surface transportation funds into a PAYGO status, which would have prevented them from being funded by borrowing.
When you're earning $50,000/yr, and spending $75,000/yr, you cannot realistically say that any section of the $75K is not being borrowed. If you spend less in any category, it reduces your overall expenditure and overall borrowing directly. If $5,000 of that is being spent on your driveway, then not spending that money directly reduces your borrowing by $5,000.
Saying that part of the Federal budget is 'pay as you go', while other parts are being borrowed, is fiction. All that matters is the amount being borrowed. Which numbers are listed first and which come later matter not a whit... the only meaningful number is the bottom line.
Refusing that grant from the Federal government, in other words, directly reduced borrowing by that much. Now, the Feds might have found something else to borrow and spend the money on, but that's not Wisconsin's fault.
When you're earning $50,000/yr, and spending $75,000/yr, you cannot realistically say that any section of the $75K is not being borrowed.
Are you sure? It seems to me that $50,000 of the $75,000 would not have been borrowed, by definition. And since the funding came out of the part that was not borrowed, the conclusion would seem to be different from your assertion.
Are you sure? It seems to me that $50,000 of the $75,000 would not have been borrowed, by definition. And since the funding came out of the part that was not borrowed, the conclusion would seem to be different from your assertion.
That reminds me of my old boss, talking about a store manager he eventually ended up firing. When that guy got a deal on a particular widget that they had already been carrying, he wanted to know which widget was the cheap one, so he'd know the one to sell cheap. He completely didn't get the idea of cost averaging, that getting in some inventory at a good price meant you reduced the average cost across your whole inventory, not that you sold individual items of inventory at different prices.
Likewise, when you are running a deficit, ALL of your expenses are deficit spending, because if you cut ANY OF THEM, your deficit drops. You can't say "this part is regular spending and this part is deficit spending". Well, you CAN, but it's usually fiscally ignorant to do so. It's like failing to understand cost averaging. ALL that matters is the number on the bottom line, not how you sort the numbers above it. And as soon as you get back to zero, then suddenly, none of your spending is deficit spending, because further cutting won't reduce deficits. (however, if you have a debt position, further cutting, and then using surpluses to repay creditors, can be a good idea. This depends on the interest cost of the loans, versus the opportunity cost of repaying the money.)
Now, you can make the argument that if your deficit is going into investment, that it's a smart choice. If you're spending $75K/year on $50K in income, but you're sinking that extra $25K into the stock market, or into building a power plant, that can be a good decision, if your returns are higher than your interest costs. But the Federal government mostly is not investing, and even when they do (and this project probably would qualify), it is often unlikely that overall tax income in future years would ever pay for the cost of the programs.
Deficits aren't, in other words, always bad. But they need to be thought about and analyzed very, very carefully, and we're just not doing that with the great majority of what we're spending. Issuing debts of that magnitude with the sole purpose of stimulating short-term economic activity, rather than generating long-term revenue, is foolish. Even if it's a useful project, it may not be worth the amount it takes to build.
An example: high speed rail from where I was living in the Bay Area directly to my employer at the time would have been superb and useful, for me, but there's no way they'd ever have paid for the cost of the project in fares and my ability to work longer. Scale that up to, say, the Big Dig in Boston -- is the increased efficiency in that city worth the gigantic expense of that project? It would take real analysis to know, but the project could have been a waste of resources and labor that would have been used better elsewhere. Or, it could be generating enough additional economic activity to pay for itself. In the second case, that's a classic example of good debt. Most of the Federal deficit is nothing like that, however.
The money had already been set aside by Congress, and another state (happily) took the grant instead.
Note that I specifically said that unless they found something else to spend it on. That still means that Wisconsin refused to participate in growing the Federal deficit. If that's at the cost of growing their OWN deficit, well, honestly, I'd still call that better than imposing the costs of their spending on other states. It's putting the good of the whole ahead of local needs, something we don't do much of anymore.
Not that I ever see leading conservatives talk like that. I suspect his thought process didn't resemble this at all. But he may accidentally have done the right thing regardless. If you're a Wisconsinite, you might be mad at him, but from the view of pretty much everyone else in the country, that's a better way to handle it. If the benefit of a project is mostly local, then the cost, and the financial risk associated with debt issuance, should mostly stay local.
Cost averaging takes the cost of a lot and averages it across the number of things in the lot, no matter what price they were. But that has nothing to do with the fact that a budget can include income and borrowing, and those two things are separate and distinct. You can keep them separate trivially (just keep them in different accounts, for example) and you *can* pay for some things with income, and some other things with borrowed money.
Enough derail, though. You've made your point pretty clearly.
That's just internal fiction. When cutting any of your expenses will reduce the amount you're borrowing, then all of it is deficit spending. You're lying to yourself about money, which people are very good at doing.
All that ultimately matters is assets versus liabilities, and if you're accruing liabilities faster than you're accruing assets, you're weakening yourself. You can engage in sophistries to hide this truth from the rubes, but that's just lying.
I am not going to go forward with it, as I said.
First up: yes I am in Madison, and you should let me know the next time you're passing by. I'd be happy to meet up for a beer. I should be clear that offer stands for all Goodjers, regardless of political persuasion.
Next time I'm near the homestead (Christmas?), you and I need to get a beer sir. Your passion and insightful commentaries in these threads are great to see.
So far, four Democrats have announced their intention to challenge Governor Walker. Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, Secretary of State Doug La Follette, and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (who narrowly lost to Walker in the 2010 election).
None of these feel like a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination to me. My slightly-informed opinion is that Barrett is probably the only one that has name recognition outside of Madison. However, he already lost once to Walker. Falk hit the ground running awhile ago and did a decent job running Dane County but I fear her union ties may come back to bit her in the end.
Dimmerswitch, what say you on potential contenders?
Gov. Walker quietly signs several controversial bills into law
Including:
- A repeal of the state's law requiring comparable pay across genders for comparable work;
- A repeal of the state's sex education law, which required that minors be taught scientifically accurate information about sex.
- A law banning abortion coverage for women in the state's upcoming Obamacare program, except for cases of medical necessity, rape, or incest. (ie, if you're a slut, you don't get coverage.)
- A bill requiring women seeking abortions to undergo a physical exam and to consult with a doctor alone, away from friends and family, "to make sure she's not being pressured into a decision".
Going to post something on this in the War on Women thread.
I can't tell whether legislation like this is being passed as part of a push to do as much damage as possible before the recalls (in the hopes that it will take decades of Democratic control to roll everything back), an attempt to rile up the base ahead of the recalls, or simply believing their rhetoric.
If he was attempting to rile the base it would have been released with a bigger fanfare. I am starting to think he really does believe the rhetoric.
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