Sep 21, 2020 crunchicrant -

Balancing priorities in the US

The directions we take, the decisions we make, are interrelated and are bounded by the discipline of resource (or money – specifically, taxes): we cannot do everything we might want to do – we live in the real world, so there is a balance – and the calls we, collectively, must make are captured in this equation:

Government

< Bigger vs Smaller >

SOCIAL PROGRAMS

Social Security and Medicare are the big expenditures of the federal government – any decisions about our future must include specification of the benefits from, and funding of, these plans.

OPPORTUNITY

Are we born ‘equal’ and then its everyone for themselves, for the rest of our lives: or should society, through the federal government (?), provide handholds so we can pull ourselves up?

ENVIRONMENT

A grave threat to our way of life and an easy topic to defer: we have done just that – its time for action, now.

WORLD ROLE

Probably the federal government’s most important role is security: we have, until recently, sought to shape the world to our interests but are stepping back from that proactive approach – what is our foreign, defense and security strategy and is it all joined up? Assessment of risks; identification of appropriate defense against/mitigation of that risk; build of that response – what will that cost? A big item, and an important element of the equation.

DYSFUNCTIONAL MARKET – HEALTHCARE

A horrible market, that needs attention so that it operates to the benefit of the American people: to Crunchicrant the one very large cost saving opportunity we have.

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PUBLIC FINANCES

Nobody wants to pay more taxes: and taxes keep it crunchy.

How do we spread the shared costs of our society?

Government is about optimal balancing of resources to attain the country’s objectives. In a democracy those objectives are set by elected politicians representing the wishes of the people, and the balance is found when politicians work together, compromising along the way, to find and implement policy.

For every stand taken by a politician, for every program wanted (or tax not wanted), there is impact elsewhere.

Ask every politician who is:

advancing an agenda requiring more government expenditure: how is it going to be paid for?
advocating for lower taxes: what programs are going to be reduced, and how?

Wanting a program, or not wanting to pay tax, is easy (and a focus on it is the trademark of an ideologue): it’s the other bit, directly connected and unavoidable, that is hard (and the proper focus of a good politician who can get stuff done).

Compromise is the key. There is no value in our politicians, in ourselves, standing 100% on the side of larger, or smaller government and not being prepared to compromise: that is a path to partisan gridlock and nothing at all will get done – disaster.

The federal deficit situation will keep it crunchy: there is no solution to the big issues unless the deficit is sustainable – this is Crunchicrant’s estimate of the need to make it sustainable:

Revenue or savings needed to be ‘found’ by the federal government – by 2030 (or soon after)	$ per US person per year
– to pay for rising Social Security/Medicare	$2,200
– to make deficit sustainable	$1,300
Total (in 2019 dollars)	$3,500

It leaves the federal government running deficits, still, but ones that are sustainable in the long term