If you don't know what level of spending is correct for the size of our economy, how do you know that this government (or any other) is spending too much?
If you don't know exactly what temperature more people would be most comfortable at, how do you know that 150 degrees is too hot?
There is nothing to KNOW about what level of spending is correct. That determination is both subjective, and shifting, and relatively arbitrary. If someone said it should be half of what we spend now, does that really mean they think that 51% would be a travesty, or that 49% would leave us devastatingly short in vital areas? Of course not.
it is pointless to get rid of Social Security as that is a paid-in insurance program for the most part.
No matter how its paid for the spending is still spending.
If the costs is going to go up (and it will) than taxing, or borrowing are going to go up (and borrowing going up most likely just means a delay in the tax increase).
Simply replacing that with Wall Street simply increases the probability of another Bears Stearns type mess in the future.
A properly diversified portfolio has less investment risk than even low risk specific investment in treasuries.
Also the SS program isn't individual investment in treasuries. Its a government program with the spending levels controlled by law set by congress, so in addition to investment risk you have political risk. There would be a harsh reaction to any votes to greatly cut benefits (or perhaps even to modestly cutting benefits), but there would also be a harsh reaction to the level of taxation required to sustain the projected level of SS spending.
Beyond all those points, is the fact that the SS money isn't invested in anything that has a real return to the government. Yes the SS bonds have a return for the SSA, but the SSA is part of the government, and it has to pay the interest and principle on those bonds. "Interest to yourself" isn't a real return. So you have, depending on how you look at it, either no money invested (i.e. "there is no trust fund its all spent"), or its invested with no return (the interest received by the government is equal to the interest paid by the government). Tieing up such a large part of the nations retirement funds without any real rate of return doesn't exactly seem to be a useful way to structure things.
The military is a huge chunk of discretionary spending.
Over time its a declining chunk. More importantly its declining by even more as a portion of total government spending. Total government spending is a far more important issue than "discretionary" spending, and is becoming more so over time as less and less of the budget is considered discretionary. |
