Agreed. But this administration is wanting to increase the debt ceiling by $4T in March. Think about that… we are supposedly finding tons and tons of waste and fraud… and yet we need to increase the debt ceiling… Someone is being conned.
I have considering killing my Vanguard Cash Plus savings account and moving it into my brokerage account (and then what to do? not sure). If FDIC insurance is on the chopping block a savings account has no value to me.
It won’t be the debt or interest that kills it.
TI simply will stall signing the checks on the debt maturing and interest due. He will blame someone else.
The numbers for 2023:
So. cut outflows by $40B/year and the program is balanced. That is only 3%. Surely, they could find some excuse to entirely cut off benefits for 3% of recipients, so as to not torque off the crusty old white guys who rule the base, by cutting everyone a bit.
Same thing with Medicare. Cut off a small percentage of recipients entirely, rather than take a small bit out of all the crusty old white guys.
That way, the few that are cut off entirely, are characterized as “cheats and frauds”, so the crusty old white guys will say “good!”, because, given the small percentage, most of them will not know anyone personally, who was cut off.
Steve
Somewhat related: further exploration of the narrative that people would work, if they were sufficiently motivated. The current system, they say, encourages people to lay around.
TI was experimenting with this on the last go around. After all, the value of a Prole is only in his capacity to work, to make a “JC” richer, right?
/sarcasm
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/republicans-consider-cuts-requirements-medicaid-120344217.html
“But this administration is wanting to increase the debt ceiling by $4T in March. Think about that… we are supposedly finding tons and tons of waste and fraud… and yet we need to increase the debt ceiling”
That is exactly the point I make with anybody who comes at me with " all the fraud that DOGE is finding" bent. No one has had any response to it. This is all so openly, flagrantly stupid. But I guess that is who Americans are now.
Innumeracy is a fundamental USAian right, and profound self injurious angry ignorance of finance and accounting is required of all patriotic families.
You mean like not knowing that corporate taxes do not take away the ability of a company to pay well or do research?
Reagan folded all that into one big budget. So Medicare and SS aren’t really separate anymore. He did it because they were both running surpluses at the time, so folding them into the larger budget made his deficit look smaller. You may very well be correct that some slight trimming would balance those programs individually, but they won’t make a dent in the deficit. Neither will the -likely illegal- activities of DOGE. Most of that is just rounding errors.
Taxes have to go up. But if you say that, you’re likely to lose your election. Which is why we’ll probably have to collapse first.
yep, in fact those two things are enhanced because the money would have gone to the government if not R&D and pay packages. Factories as well would be built here.
Jefferson v Hamilton
Not everyone corporation wants factory production.
Factories would be built here? I missed something, I think.
Factories mostly aren’t built here because American labor is expensive relative to -for example- Bangladeshi labor. Or Chinese labor. So they move production over there. It really has very little to do with taxes.
I was reading (maybe a year ago?) that what factories are coming back are automated. Evidently, automation is cheaper even than Chinese labor. So the factories come back, but employ very few people. It’s just machines running 24/7/365, with no bathroom breaks, or paid vacation, or anything pesky humans demand.
The government has maintained the construct of separate trust funds for SS and Medicare. I hear plenty of people chattering about different dates when each of the funds “goes broke”. No, finding some excuse to deny benefits to 3-5% of recipients will not dent the overall deficit, but a nip here, a bite there, and the administration can boast about more tax cuts for the “JCs”. That is what we saw in Michigan, under the last red Gov, who was a “JC”: tax increases, and reduced services, for the Proles, and tax cuts for the “JCs”.
Steve
Even if it is very few people employed, it is better than none. Someone has to build the factories, maintain and operate the automated equipment and ship the products out. Having control of our own supply chains and ability to produce whatever is needed ~locally is an advantage. Having the local skillset to do this turns out to be advantageous, if/when something like a pandemic happens (cough…face masks and other medical equipment).
So rather than think just a few jobs is problematic. It is what it is…efficient local production.
Mike
I totally agree. We need local sources, and a few jobs are better than no jobs. I mostly was commenting on the relocation of factories overseas. It isn’t taxes, which was implied in an earlier post. It is labor costs. The thing about bringing back automated factories was more of an aside.
Factories leverage labor.
Factories are here now and have been.
They are built until there is no more expensing them against corporate taxes.
Raise corporate taxes and more Factories will be built here.
Labor is also expensed. Wages go up with higher corporate taxes.
R&D as well.
Not necessarily. Unlike physical goods, research and engineering information can be transmitted along that same bit of fiber than brings all those telemarketing calls to your home.
Steve
It can be either. Think of all the pharmas in Ireland for favorable tax treatment. The biggest export of Ireland to the US is (legal) drugs, $60 billion (80%) last year.
DB2
Yes necessarily to expense it against your taxes
Almost, not quite. Factories leverage available resources. Of which labor is ONE of them. If there is no local readily-available supply of materials, then there is no reason to build a factory there. Companies move OUT of southern states due to the lack of trainable/competent workers in the area. They relocate to more northern states to get the trained/trainable/competent local workers who would NOT move to a southern state.
Hand built or machine built the amount of material does vary somewhat.
Hand built or machine built the amount of labor varies a lot.
We are talking substantially more factories and a much greater need for labor.
The relative costs of the factories drop with domestic economies of scale in a major factory buildout.
Not really. Automated manufacturing tends to be built with the intent of using already prepared cut-and-shaped pieces of material to efficiently produce a specific product.
Example: One customer wanted ONE machine to product 5-million (or more) GOOD parts per 24-hour day, with error rate of not over 20% (so 80% pass = 5-million or more, max 20% fail). We provided a fairly standard unit (smaller than a 24" cube) which the customer then “souped up” to meet his requirements. We did NOT know the requirements BEFORE building and selling him the machine. He told us AFTERWARDS–when he couldn’t figure why the main bearing wore out in a few days. DUH !! We got the bearing back, looked at them, and THEN he told us what he did (changes he had made to the original machine). After we finished having a roaring laugh at what he had done, we told him to buy an automated lubrication system for the machine–because there was NO WAY manual lubrication could keep up with the demand. Sent him a replacement set of bearings (no charge) and he installed auto-lube system. He was REALLY HAPPY thereafter. But he had not bought the appropriate machine for the job. The machine he ordered and received was a standard hand-operated model. So, not designed for high-volume production. We built other machines that were purpose-built for high-speed production. Those machines could easily meet and/or exceed that production target had he told us about it in the first place. The machine did NOT use pre-cut/shaped material. It worked using the material as it was delivered–big spools of material that were fed into the machine.
However, the cost of getting all that material pre-cut and shaped is significantly higher (if it is needed–which it IS at Tesla, for example). Been there, done that, know the reason(s) for the outcome.
Labor depends on whether components can be produced elsewhere AND still be “plug and play”. If making things in large volume, then minimal diversity in the final product (other than maybe color, etc). When producing precision machinery, it usually is NOT a high-volume facility. Rather, hand fitting of components is necessary due to variability of each machine. Been there, done that–a LOT. Example above demonstrates that fact.
