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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (74046)	2/4/2000 9:28:00 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Let's assume a simple example of a married couple with an annual income of $50K per year. They spend $60K per year for 8 years borrowing the difference - running a deficit of $10K per year. At the end of 8 years they owe $80K plus accumulated interest. The husband says to the wife - "If we had only cut our spending back to $58K per year like I wanted we wouldn't be in this mess. Why that $2K lower spending would have been a 3.33% reduction each year. Compounding that 3.33% over 8 years would have been over 29%. And a 29% reduction in last years spending would have been more than $17K. Why instead of going deeper into debt by $10K last year we would have had a surplus of $7K. Our financial problems are all your fault, you spendthrift you!" Wife says "Honey, you've spending too much time on that Reagan website." Now who's to blame for this couples financial problems - the wife, the husband, or both?

To: Neocon who wrote (74046)	2/5/2000 3:05:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Just for entertainment, Neocon, I'll take my own challenge, and try to come up with a 1989 budget 24.5% smaller that the historical one. From the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1995, table 520, rounded to billions: $1143b Total outlays $ 863b After hypothetical 24.5% reduction Add up: $304b National Defense $233b Social Security $ 85b Medicare $169b Interest on the Debt ===== $791b Total of Defense, SS, Medicare, Interest Which leaves a cool $72b for everything else, historically budgeted at $352b. Want to try your hand at that one, Neocon? An 80% reduction across the board on everything else would have done it, or Reagan could have zeroed out 80% of the remaining federal programs. Or, you can hypothesize that Reagan would have cut SS and Medicare, while raising SS and Medicare taxes of course, if you want to keep revenue the same. Or he could have defaulted on the debt, or cut defense. Facts are stupid things, as the great man said. The "facts" presented in reagan.webteamone.com seem pretty typical of the kind favored by the right wing "fact" mongers around here. I reserve the right to be amused. As I was by the mumble I'm replying to, it looks like a good synthesis of "the best data" from "the major metastudy". May as well outlaw public breast feeding while you're at it. I'm not kidding, either.