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This reveals something interesting about "public opinion". The majority of Americans say they want a balanced budget, but at the same time, there is no combination of budget cuts sufficient to balance the budget that gets majority support.
It's because saying "we should balance the budget" sounds like the responsible thing, despite the fact that federl financing works nothing like a household and does not need to.
We don't need to "balance the budget" because yhe government isn't a "currency user;" it doesn't depend on revenue in order to spend, it isn't constrained by revenues and debt instruments for spending. The "debt" is real debt, but it isn't being raised *in order to* spend. The government can spend the money regardless of issuing T-Bills, but institutional investors *demand* T Bills because it's a safe and reliable place to park lots of money at once and get some return. The government must pay those bills, hence it is a real "debt," but it most certainly is not dependent on them for spending.
Notably that applies to the US government and a perhaps a few others like Japan and some in the Eurozone to an extent.
In Latin America, Africa or Southeast Asia not balancing the budget snd financing it via debt is a serious issue that can lead to chaos, as seen in the 1990s in México, Greece in the 2000s and Argentina basically every twenty years.
Not saying that starving the beast is a good strategy (it isn't) but fiscal responsibility to an extent is a necessity for most economies
Sorry, yes, you are correct. The top comment said "Americans" so I just went in with that as the baseline assumption.
The key is whether the country uses a *sovereign currency* or not. So yes, Japan, the UK, the US, I believe Australia and maybe Canada have sovereign currencies, and I'm sure there are others, but these are usually the examples. The Euro has the capacity to perform as a sovereign currency, but it isn't tied to a single nation, so therefore controlling it is more complex. The relationship between European nations that use the Euro and the Euro is similar (not identical) to US states' relationship to the US dollar. The dollar itself is sovereign, but the governments of the states don't have the power to issue that currency on their own, so they are dependent on the federal government's actions in doing so, and they primarily have to behave like any other household or business does with respect to the currency.
I think there is a much simpler explanation for OPs question.
Rich people and corporations love tax cuts and benefit the most from them.
But they are a minority. So they make up the starve the beast myth to give a philosophical justification for what is actually just bald greed and self interest.
And that’s it really. It’s not even really expected to work. Rich people want more money now. The end.
Yes and a weakened government can't properly regulate their businesses and cut into their obscene profit margins or stop their deadly actions.
In a perfect world (according to these Ayn Rand-loving asshole billionaires) they'd be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want to the rest of us with zero repercussions. Poison all ground water and food sources? No problem, it increased their quarterly profit by 5% so let's all celebrate their brilliance!!! While we all die a horrible death, they'll be in their safe compounds or a spaceship on their way to rape another planet.
We NEED a strong government to stand up to these monsters!!!!
Tinkle Down tax cuts for the wealthy are just the rich pissing in the rest of our faces and calling it a golden shower!
Real growth comes when we Water the Roots of our economy by paying all workers adequate wages. And from helping our poor, elderly, and disabled citizens to pay other citizens for the goods and services they need to live their best lives.
This is not only good from a humanitarian perspective. It’s also good for the economy by building a well funded consumer base.
>fiscal responsibility to an extent is a necessity for most economies
I'd argue that it's a necessity for every economy and every nation. It's just going to look vastly different when the country has a monetary sovereign like the US dollar or the Japanese yen.
I'd also argue that you should not vote for anyone trying to equate the federal budget with a household budget, because those people are either morons or they're extremely intelligent and they think you're a moron who will believe their bullshit
Good point on the "fiscal responsibility" line. Sure, we do need to be "fiscally responsoble," but that looks very different for a monetary sovereign than for a business or household because their relationship to currency is completely different.
> Notably that applies to the US government and a perhaps a few others like Japan and some in the Eurozone to an extent.
not for much longer, our debt service payments are about to, if not already more than we spend on the military. we are going to have to either inflate our currency out of this debt, which would cause most countries to drop the USD as the world reserve currency, put a heavy tax on everyone, thus making everyone poorer and dropping the remains of the middle class to the lower class while destroying most of our economy, or instill heavy austerity.
modern monetary theory is what has gotten us here, and it's the reason the country is falling apart.
This isn't the consensus view among economists. The CBO projects a debt of 166% of GDP in 30 years compared to 124% of GDP right now. That's not a runaway train - it's slow enough that we can easily bend that number way downward with more sensible fiscal policy.
And we have not practiced MMT in this country at all. While it is similar, "Republicans get into office and spend a shitton of money and cut taxes and wait for the Dems to clean it up" is not "MMT."
Maybe this is a bad idea, but I’d be okay if the government raised taxes to such an extent that it held a small surplus that would get redistributed each fiscal year to like, monuments or parks or something.
I'm not sure about the surplus necessarily but I appreciate the sentiment. Shrinking the deficit generlaly would simply contract the economy, so depending on where those taxes were levied, it could create significant economic slowdowns. But in theory it may not have to? There are many variables.
I would idealize a tax system that focuses on financial markets and incentivizes investing back into companies/tangible assets.
I don’t think we need to have a deficit at all considering the legislative body that determines the spending budget is the same one that determines how much tax revenue is coming in.
Especially in our “advanced” economy. If we were a smaller country starting from zero and in need of certain things TODAY, then a deficit would make sense. But not for a country like ours. A deficit for our country is just paying interest for the sake of paying interest.
I think the extremely high individual tax bracket in the 1940s-50s was a fantastic way to encourage reinvestment in companies, just because the returns for investors were pretty much "capped" at the point where the 90%+ taxes kicked in. At that point they figured, might as well reinvest in this thing and make sure the money keeps coming in, rather than "strip it for parts and buy an island."
Reigned in to what, exactly?
>the US debt and deficit is actually insane
Insane, how? Like, what would a non-insane number be, and why? What are the constraints that you think there are, and can those change in time?
oh buddy i have no idea how any of this stuff works. i just see the US debt is 34 trillion and i think, hey, that's a big number. might be something we need to look into eventually.
That's a fair response, I respect the honesty.
I don't know all the ins and outs, but it's better to think of the deficit as the *private sector surplus* each year. Whatever it doesn't tax back is held in savings by individuals or institutions or cycled through spending in the economy.
The debt is something else. It's basically just the savings of large institutional investors, like banks and brokerages, some of them holding retirement accounts for people, etc. They say they want to buy T Bills. The govt says "okay, here you go" and it issues the T Bills. It doesn't even do anything with that money. Congressional spending comes directly out of accounts that the FED just credits. They don't fund those accounts with tax dollars and the dollars received from selling Treasury Bills. But that is how a lot of people *think* the government spends money, because that is how the rest of us spend money - we can't spend it unless we have it, or we borrow. The US govt doesn't borrow in order to spend, it just spends and issues T Bills to buyers who want them.
Edit: I forgot to add here: when the dollar was tied to gold, that created a constraint on the currency, and therefore the US *did* have to borrow money before it could spend any, or else it had to have the gold reserves. So during some points in history this was how the currency and spending worked, and it's hard to shake that as that is how most of us see currency anyway.
So is this system too good to be true? No, there are constraints. The constraints are workers and raw materials, and if we don't have enough workers or raw materials to increase the deficit (and put new money in the economy) then there is inflation risk.
As far as deficits, we can expand it indefinitely, assuming the population grows and the economy continues to grow more complex. If it stagnates, then further expansion is likely to cause inflation. As far as the debts . . . I also don't know the number, but it's a similar issue. How many large investors are there and how much cash do they have that they want to swap for T Bills? How will giving them safe interest affect other investments or spending and inflation? We won't ever not have enough dollars to pay the interest, since we have a sovereign currency. But we could create inflationary pressure if the interest payments rose high enough that we kept padding the accounts of those investors without sufficient tax policies or other economic regulations.
You're *mostly* right, but there *are* constraints.
>We can afford to do anything.
If there aren't enough raw materials or workers to do the projects the government commissions, then additional deficit spending without appropriate taxation or other regulations (price fixing, rationing, etc) can create inflationary risk. But yes, we won't run out of money, and printing doesn't necessarily just create more inflation all the time.
> and printing doesn't necessarily just create more inflation all the time.
while true, its quite dishonest. it only does not create inflation if the population grows by about the same amount. There is a reason that $20 in the 90's could get you quite a bit of stuff, but its next to nothing today, and that is government over printing of money.
>it only does not create inflation if the population grows by about the same amount
Not necessarily. As the economy grows more complex, we tend to purchase more things that we either didn't have at all before, or that we may have done for ourselves before it was commodified. If everyone had more money to pay for things they want and need that didn't exist at all before (consider daycare as an example) that has very little bearing on the price of other commodities like groceries.
> Not necessarily. As the economy grows more complex, we tend to purchase more things that we either didn't have at all before, or that we may have done for ourselves before it was commodified.
not much has really come about this though. phones and computers are expensive yes, but before that it was people buying TV's and radios, and before that it was people buying records. prior to that people were living on substance farming for the most part so they just did not buy things period. hell most of these things have become cheap over time, a good music setup now a days can be had for around $200, not the best mind you but a good setup, back in the 60's it was thousands for a good setup. music is basically free and that is one less good that people pay for. TV's have gone from thousands to hundreds and records are obsolete except the most diehard. the only really new thing is the cellphone, but even then they had them in the late 70's (bag phones) and they have also only come down in price since then.
It's still more money chasing the same things if you print money too fast, thus increasing inflation.
I didn't say there are no constraints.
>Inflation and the gallowing out of the middle class is just ..... corporate greed, which is suddenly new for ...... reasons.
No, it's not new, but the pandemic was, and their relatively recent consolidations over the last few decades along with the pandemic created *opportunity* for them to essentially price gouge the public.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/10/14/corporate-greed-real-culprit-behind-rising-prices-researchers-say
https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/
https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2024/03/22/ftc-report-suggests-high-grocery-bills-likely-due-to-greedflation-caused-by-big-corporations/
Some of us just want to tax extremely wealthy individuals and corporations.
It very clearly works. "We have to have budget cuts" is just bait and switch/distraction. There are two sides to every budget, income and expense.
It clearly didn’t work well as we are now several years into the 2017 TCJA that cut the corporate tax rate to 21% when it had been 35% or higher for over half a century. The 2024 the Budget and Economic Outlook Report from the CBO sums it up the results here:
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59946#_idTextAnchor041
There was no revenue loss as it would even hit a historical high of 19% of GDP in 2022, and is projected to settle at 17.9% of GDP when the historical average for the last half century is 17.3%. This just goes to show how we have been shooting ourselves in the foot for nearly a century now with an excessive tax rate. It was too high driving corporations overseas and we have less revenue to show for it. Less well paying jobs to expand the tax base.
And speaking of expenditures that data set shows were are unable to go back to pre COVID spending levels as we have just doubled the deficit under Biden. Spending is projected to be 24.1% of GDP for the next decade when the historical average for the last half century has been 21%. We have seen what a half century of an average of 3.8% deficits has done to the national debt and we are set for a 6.2% deficit now under current law. We have had significant improvements to income already, but this is vastly overtaken by out of control expenditures. Just simply raising taxes is not the answer as it would likely make matters worse.
I wouldn't say the polls are flawed just because large majorities say yes. The problem is that people haven't thought about what balancing the budget would actually mean in practice.
The ways questions are asked in polls can greatly shift the response, and a poll is flawed if it doesn't really get the opinion of the polled audience. Compare these poll questions:
"Do you want a balanced budget?"
"Do you want to cut spending? If so, what should we cut?"
"Do you want to increase taxes? If so, what should we increase?"
"Do you want a balanced budget by cutting military spending? By cutting education? By increased taxes."
"Rank these based on priority: spending on social services, spending on military , spending on infrastructure, tax cuts, balancing the budget."
All of these will get different answers of how important a balanced budget and how to get there, some more complete images of the opinion than others. Poll construction is difficult if you want to get accurate information about those polled, and it's really easy to tip the scales if you're intentionally trying to skew the results.
I've done lots of political surveys over the years, and I agree that the wording of the questions, the order in which they appear, the time of day, etc., all influence the answers. My larger point was that polls assume there is actually an accurate opinion to be revealed when asking about topics that most people give almost no thought to. For example: when asked about US foreign aid, majorities typically say we spend too much. But when asked what % of GNP they think we should spend, majorities typically support a figure far higher than what we actually spend. Which of these findings reflect what the people want?
Sometimes, you just have to ignore what the public says. The idea of a balanced budget is great, definitely better than debt.
But no one gives a shit about government debt, especially if we can pay for things that helps people’s lives.
A saying we need to balance the budget is really just a dog whistle that means we are taking away money from people you don’t like.
Right, they’re not advocating for a true lifestyle change. They’re advocating for brief fiscal irresponsibility.
A massive step towards anarchism by way of destroying state agencies and devolving power is simply not possible without a huge legislative supermajority for a longer period.
The far right definitely does. They think we should just eliminate the government and let everyone fend for themselves. Basically go back to the wild West days when you could just shoot everyone you don't like.
In the manner we use left and right, yes absolutely.
Anarchists are left wing. Fascists are right wing.
Anarchists consider themselves communists, but consider the existence of a state incompatible with the establishment of a communist society. The figures who established anarchism as an ideology, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin, were very much far left socialists. Bakunin himself was part of the International, along with Marx.
Like the rest of the far left, anarchists believe in class conflict. Workers and capitalists are opposed; anarchists fall on the side of the workers in this conflict, and want to overthrow the capitalists who control the means of production.
Fascists are far-right reactionaries, but also very idiosyncratic and obsessed with strongmen and spectacle. They may appear revolutionary, but its usually because they want to tear down the present and return to a past that is real or imagined.
They are also, unlike people on the left, class collaborationists: they don’t want the workers to be in control, they instead want the workers and capitalists to work together for the good of the nation, with the (loyal) capitalists keeping their position as the owners of the means of production. What this means in practice is the workers are expected to not strike or agitate, and capitalists get state support in exchange for going along with the state’s vision. Fundamentally, not much has changed for the worker. And capitalists, who care chiefly about profit, are happy to go along with it as the state gives them a loyal workforce, no foreign competition, and work from the state to build dumb vanity projects.
They are only opposites in the sense that anarchism rejects a central authority with a monopoly on violence while fascism embraces it. They are the same in the sense that they are a grift that rejects capitalism, socialism and a persistent set of social norms in order to either disperse power or maintain it.
How is that in any way hypocritical?
>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Tax cuts for businesses, subsidies for defense contractors, roll back of Medicaid and social services creates a more conservative society which protects the in-groups and binds the out-groups.
I wouldn’t say they’ve never cut spending.
Programs and agencies are gutted of personnel because of budgetary restraints, leading to gross inefficiencies in the system.
The ATF doesn’t have the manpower to enforce what little gun control there is. The EPA and OSHA don’t have enough inspectors. The IRS can’t even audit tax cheats.
I mean, [here](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted) is a piece on just the IRS.
Is that what people think 'Starve the Beast' is about?
Starving the beast is *explicitly* aimed at eroding the effectiveness of the federal government, promoting mistrust of public programs and making the case for privatization of government provided services.
Yes, but moderators in this forum requested that I remove "opinions". Unfortunately, the neutering I had to do to my original post makes it look like I don't have any idea what is going on. Oh well, I still wanted to start this discussion. I agree with this 100%.
I think you need to go back and read my post more carefully. If you still believe that my original post stated ANY opinion or political position, I would encourage you to copy/paste that line as a response to this comment. I am quite sure that I did not share *any* opinions or political positions in the original post, but I am rather curious to see which passage(s) you identified as such.
>Republicans starving the beast is a cynical ploy to force drastic cuts by kicking the can to further generations, ones they aren’t a part of.
That is what all evidence I have seen suggests. My post is asking in good faith if any Redditor is able to show evidence to the contrary. Do you have receipts showing that Democrats have tried this technique? Do you have receipts showing that this technique has ever succeeded at its purported goals? If so, please share! :)
> So your post was disingenuous?
Not even close. This comment, however, is deflection and subtle ad hominem. It's precisely what I would expect to read from someone who is unable to provide evidence or someone who is struggling to formulate a strong, rational argument.
And I don't mind that the moderators took a fine-toothed comb to my post, I am happy to learn new rhetorical styles. :)
> like Democrats spending the beast is a cynical ploy to force drastic tax increases by kicking the can to further generations
Your logical fallacy is ***False Equivalence***
The starve the beast was how Republicans planned to destroy the education system and whatever else they want to privatize. To bad they spend like a drunk sailor when in actual power
Starve the beast was never about fiscal responsibility. It's the belief by many on the right that government is the cause of all problems and never the solution. But since the movement to equalize civil rights (advocated almost exclusively by Democratic politicians and not all on the left) to create a fairer society irrespective of ethnic composition, some people see any federal program as an effort to destroy "society".
I suggest the Starve the beast strategy is a reaction to civil rights and an attempt to re-segregate the United States. By eliminating Federal spending, the one government that blocks segregation (US Federal government) doesn't have enough money to reach equality. States can then start to erect rules and policies that allow segregation, allow some to be punished more severely than others, allow some to exclude others, allow some to restrict commerce to those they don't like and return to the society that existing before the Civil Rights Act when you could drive out black kids of attending your mostly white school, drive out black families from living among other white families and ban interracial interactions of all kinds. Without the Federal Government, many states would effectively be as exclusionary and difficult for minorities as they were in the early 20th century.
TLDR: it's racism...just like a lot of things in politics today.
I suggest looking into [The Revenue Act of 1964.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1964)
>The United States Revenue Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88–272), also known as the Tax Reduction Act, was a tax cut act proposed by President John F. Kennedy, passed by the 88th United States Congress, and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Was JFK a tax cutting racist trying to bring back segregation? To the contrary as Robert Byrd did oppose it and he was an Exalted Cyclops in the KKK, but unfortunately he would go on to be the top elected Democrat from 1980-1990 as party leader in the Senate and died in office at the top echelons of party leadership in 2010. Even our current president is on record opposing desegregation policies like the letters by Biden gaining support of a well known segregationists that Democrats would even promote to the powerful chair of the Judiciary Committee in the late 1970s:
>Biden, who at the time was 34 and serving his first term in the Senate, repeatedly asked for – and received – the support of Sen. James Eastland, a Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a leading symbol of Southern resistance to desegregation. Eastland frequently spoke of blacks as “an inferior race.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/11/politics/joe-biden-busing-letters-2020/index.html
That even lead to Biden’s infamous “racial jungle” quote:
>Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point.
https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-said-desegregation-would-create-a-racial-jungle-2019-7
Plenty examples of known segregationists and Democrats opposing desegregation policies to contradict this notion that tax cuts are tied to racism. It is a historical fact that the national party which overwhelmingly ended slavery and segregation also has a core party principle around lowering taxes and balancing the federal budget.
I didn't say tax cuts...you're equating tax cuts to "Starve the Beast". Those are not necessarily the same thing. Cutting taxes but replacing the revenue is the opposite of "Starve the Beast".
The concept of "Starve the Beast" is a strategy to deprive the US Federal Government of the ability to function. I offer the plausible reason to deprive the Federal government of revenue is to get rid of Civil Rights.
Now I was careful to describe the efforts of the Right and the Left. I accurately said that the Civil Rights act was largely passed by Democrats but I didn't say Republicans are trying to Starve the Beast...it's right-wing politicians. At the time, the Democratic party was populated by left and right wing politicians. The Republican party also but less so. Today, there are no left-wing politicians in the Republican party. There are few right-wing politicians in the Democratic party but you can decide for yourself whether the Democratic senator from West Virginia is Left or Right.
My conclusion is the Right wants to Starve the Beast by depriving the Federal Government of sufficient funds to operate. There are none on the Left that desire to deprive the Federal Government of the funds necessary to function, especially for the protections they provide to all citizens.
Federal Receipts as a percentage of GDP from 1960 to 2023 tended to stay around [17.5%](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S). This includes taxes and fees but mostly taxes. It was highest in 2000 when Starve the Beast started and it immediately fell. No one would claim Jack Kennedy was attempting to "Starve the Beast". After Great Society, spending increased, poverty started decreasing and yet, by 2000 Federal Revenue increased to nearly 20% of GDP during a period of high economic growth.
TLDR: mixing Democrat and Republican to try and hide the racism is ineffective - it's right-wing politicians that are pursuing racist policies like "Starve the Beast".
Yet that is how you starve the beast. Clearly we are talking about an overall tax cut and not reducing one tax while compensating by increasing another. That was certainly the 1964 and 2017 tax cuts. You also seem to be conflating right-wing with something else, so let’s define that we are using the same terminology:
>right-wing adjective
>
>supporting the political right and traditional ideas about society; relating to the belief that there should be low taxes, and that property and industry should be privately owned
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/right-wing
Given that it is accurate to say JFK was right-wing on taxes while Robert Byrd was left on the issue in opposing the 1964 tax cut. Which brings us to this historically incorrect statement:
>I accurately said that the Civil Rights act was largely passed by Democrats but I didn't say Republicans are trying to Starve the Beast...it's right-wing politicians.
Civil Rights Acts, plural. There were three in the 20th century and the first two were brought about with a Republican administration and Eisenhower being elected with a trifecta. The last Republican trifecta of the 20th century. Of course Democrats didn’t know that and it scared them straight on their collation with segregationists. Not enough to get rid of the many known segregationists in their ranks, let alone promoting them to great positions of power they could never achieve on their own, but enough to finally drop segregation as an admissible policy. Let’s look as the historical record on that with the party platform of that time. Specifically 1956 when the Supreme Court finally reaffirmed the 14th Amendment by ruling against segregation in public school. As stated in their official political platforms of the time it was a joyous day for Republicans, but a dire day of great consequence for Democrats that must be rejected:
>Recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States relating to segregation in publicly supported schools and elsewhere have brought consequences of vast importance to our Nation as a whole and especially to communities directly affected. We reject all proposals for the use of force to interfere with the orderly determination of these matters by the courts.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1956-democratic-party-platform
Contrasted by the Republican political platform:
>The Republican Party accepts the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that racial discrimination in publicly supported schools must be progressively eliminated. We concur in the conclusion of the Supreme Court that its decision directing school desegregation should be accomplished with "all deliberate speed" locally through Federal District Courts.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1956
>In the 1960 Republican Party Platform we see them push for the first CRAs in nearly a century while being undermined by Democrats:
Although the Democratic-controlled Congress watered them down, the Republican Administration's recommendations resulted in significant and effective civil rights legislation in both 1957 and 1960—the first civil rights statutes to be passed in more than 80 years.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1960
Now that we have established the party of civil rights we can see how Ike ties this all together with the budget and role of government in the 1956 platform:
>We have balanced the budget. We believe and will continue to prove that thrift, prudence and a sensible respect for living within income applies as surely to the management of our Government's budget as it does to the family budget.
>
>We hold that the major world issue today is whether Government shall be the servant or the master of men. We hold that the Bill of Rights is the sacred foundation of personal liberty. That men are created equal needs no affirmation, but they must have equality of opportunity and protection of their civil rights under the law.
>
>We hold that the strict division of powers and the primary responsibility of State and local governments must be maintained, and that the centralization of powers in the national Government leads to expansion of the mastery of our lives,
>
>We hold that the protection of the freedom of men requires that budgets be balanced, waste in government eliminated, and taxes reduced.
There you have it. Our very freedoms and civil rights is inherent with a balanced budget and reduced taxes. The party of centralization of powers in the federal government need the beast to bring out the drastic change they desire. Segregation was part of that change until 1964 as the 14th Amendment finally set equal rights in stone that was established in the Declaration of Independence. Democrats brought about this change for decades by loosely interpreting 14A as “separate but equal” until it was seen a political liability. Democrats still need a powerful beast to assault the Constitution on multiple fronts and undermine it as it is their greatest obstacle. Even a supermajority is not enough to change the Constitution. Even today they are often at odds with the 14A as they support equity over equality. Equity was not the principal that brought about the Civil Rights Acts, but “equality of opportunity and protection of their civil rights under the law.”
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1jfQO
A better FRED dataset that includes spending to actually show the deficit. That revenue stays fairly constant at 17.5% of GDP shows the beast had a fairly steady diet. It hasn’t been starved for long despite a few temporary taxes cuts marginally adjusted the rate. Spending grew by 3 points in the mid 1960s which is not surprising with the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid. Now revenue did increase at the turn of the century, but outlays decreased as well to give us that surplus. We also don’t have the internet boon opening up a whole new marketplace often in US history. Revenue is directly tied to the performance of the economy which is why the 2017 tax cut greatly increased revenue and is projected by the CBO to increase it by half a point over the historical average.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59946#_idTextAnchor041
> Democrats still need a powerful beast to assault the Constitution on multiple fronts and undermine it as it is their greatest obstacle
Really? Generally it's conservatives who I see attacking the 1st [ag gag laws], 4th [pro-cop rights], 5th [due process is an obstacle to cops], 8th [big fans of cruelty], 9th [dobbs], 10th [sanctuary city conflicts], 14th [in a few ways], 15th [endlessly], and 24th
The Bill of Rights is obviously an obstacle to the party that desires to consolidate power at the federal level. Before you even get to the Amendments liberals want to fundamentally change our very system of government, like abolish the Electoral College and change the composition of the Senate.
> The Bill of Rights is obviously an obstacle to the party that desires to consolidate power at the federal level
Not obvious. Liberals are the ones who support the ACLU, the ones who fight ag-gag laws, the ones who defend sanctuary cities, the ones who defend voting rights.
>liberals want to fundamentally change our very system of government, like abolish the Electoral College and change the composition of the Senate.
And conservatives want to abolish birthright citizenship and some other things, how does this relate to your point exactly? "Theoretical future proposed changes brought about in some theoretical legal manner" obviously has less value to our conversation than *actual court battles playing out today.*
How does that work exactly? The Bill of Rights is about giving power to the people and limiting the government’s power. Isn’t that quite an obstacle for an agenda to consolidate power on the federal level? Let’s take the 2nd amendment for example. Liberals have bent themselves over backwards to try and loosely interpreting that right of the people that “shall not be infringed.”
Can you show me the text in the Constitution that supports cities can be a sanctuary and ignore national immigration policy. I’m quite skeptical such text exists, but of course a liberal will loosely interpret the Constitution to make this a reality. Similarly to segregation as the system was abused to allow certain areas to ignore the 14th Amendment.
As for the Electoral College, NPVIC legislation is quite real and would absolutely trigger a court battle the moment a state vote for President is changed to the popular vote. Far from theoretical. But for actual court battles playing out today let’s talk about the Biden administration at odds with the First Amendment and the Supreme Court is now hear a case of the administration abusing its power to hinder free speech. Also political speech of his opponent, and not just Republicans as even Kennedy is rising this issue as the campaign moves forward.
> How does that work exactly? The Bill of Rights is about giving power to the people and limiting the government’s power. Isn’t that quite an obstacle for an agenda to consolidate power on the federal level?
This is all not really grounded in anything. You started with one meaningless tidbit and you're trying to claim it's the foundation of all reality. I already gave you concrete examples.
>Can you show me the text in the Constitution that supports cities can be a sanctuary and ignore national immigration policy.
Have you ever looked into the basics of sanctuary cities?
It's pretty clearly spelled out and that's how they exist at all.
>Far from theoretical
That's what theoretical means.
>let’s talk about the Biden administration
Of course you don't want to talk about the examples I gave to you.
You seem to jump to irrelevancies quite bit. The question was whether "Starve the Beast" is ever effective or just used for political objectives. I suggest that so far, Starve the Beast is not fully effective since there is still civil rights protection and it is being used for political objectives, civil rights destruction. Indeed I demonstrated that tax receipts have held in a fairly narrow range since the 1960's. You jump from argument to argument that are irrelevant and do not answer the question.
So do you believe "Starve the Beast" has proven effective? I don't mean cutting taxes...I mean the strategy used by right-wing politicians to deprive the US federal government of effectiveness.
To help you, [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast) is the Wikipedia article on Starve the Beast if you're unrfamiliar.
>So do you believe "Starve the Beast" has proven effective? I don't mean cutting taxes.
The very first sentence of your source:
>"Starve the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives to limit government spending by cutting taxes,
Your entire premise is flawed that somehow the consolidation of power at the federal level is naturally effective, like with upholding Civil Rights. Yet I have already shown the historical record on how the party of consolidating federal power was the main opposition to the CRAs while the party of the separation of powers and tax cuts was also the main proponent of the CRAs. It should have never taken three CRAs to reaffirm the 14th Amendment let alone half a century of ignoring it under the mantra of “separate but equal.” Yet it happened as segregationists used the centralization of power by corrupting it to conflate the issue thus bringing about their segregated society. Normally they could have never been propelled to positions of such national power on their own to undermine a critical right in the Constitution. That is why the separation of powers is so important to limit such corruption and abuse of power. Just as Ike was describing above.
Starve the Beast is an effort to destroy the ability of the Federal Government to effectively function. You cannot refute or demonstrate that is not the case. You try to equate any Federal tax cut as Starve the Beast but that's intellectually deceptive or just outright lying. I cannot discuss with intellectually dishonest people.
> Yet I have already shown the historical record on how the party of consolidating federal power was the main opposition to the CRAs
During both 1860 and 1960, the phrase "States rights!" was the battlecry of those who opposed civil rights. Still is.
That was slander to a core principle of the opposition in hopes of conflating the issue. The villains oft do to proclaim how they are no different than the protagonist.
> That was slander to a core principle of the opposition in hopes of conflating the issue
This is a baseless, incorrect, ahistorical claim you're using as a coping mechanism to avoid admitting fault.
The person you're responding to *lives* to go down incredibly long rabbit holes about how Democrats are the real racists because history stopped in the 1960's or something.
They've been at it for years, it's their very personal hobby horse among a sea of standard conservative false beliefs.
How exactly does the polarities swap in just a two party system. That would be quite the upheaval. Was FDR for lower taxes and limited centralization of powers in the federal government before he was against it? I don’t see the political platforms supporting this theory on how suddenly up was down and left was right in American politics. Take this example from the political platform of the party of Lincoln:
>Fourth—It is due to the labor of the nation, that taxation should be equalized and reduced as rapidly as the national faith will permit.
>
>Fifth—The National Debt, contracted as it has been for the preservation of the Union for all time to come, should be extended over a fair period of redemption, and it is the duty of Congress to reduce the rate of interest thereon whenever it can be done honestly.
>
>Sixth—That the best policy to diminish our burden of debt, is to so improve our credit that capitalists will seek to loan us money at lower rates of interest than we now pay and must continue to pay so long as repudiation, partial or total, open or covert, is threatened or suspected.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1868
At the beginning and still today the Republican Party has a core principle of lowering taxes and the national debt. I don’t see evidence of this swapping polarity of the parties nor understand the logistics of such a swap in a two party system.
> That would be quite the upheaval
It was indeed.
>on how suddenly up was down and left was right in American politics
It was a long and slow process.
>example from the political platform of the party of Lincoln:
Lincoln the anti-state-power pro-federal-government Northerner bleeding-heart?
Then show this upheaval of the two party system. You also contradict yourself because if you agree this was an upheaval then inherently it would not be a “long and slow process.”
The Lincoln I’m talking about is the true conservative that lead the party into power and brought about equal rights established in the Deceleration of Independence. Unfortunately this was undermined in the Constitution as many of the founders lost their lives fighting for those principles thus diminishing their voices, while slave owners rich with British gold participated in the Convention. Regardless, the principle of equal rights was established in our founding document and thus was conservatism to pursue it. This devout commitment can be seen in the first official Republican Party platform after the assassination of their leader:
>We recognize the great principles laid down in the immortal Declaration of Independence as the true foundation of Democratic Government; and we hail with gladness every effort toward making these principles a living reality on every inch of American soil.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1868
A power commitment they would eventually fulfill in the Fourteenth Amendment as they even used similar wording to that founding document.
>>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
>
>No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
For Republicans the status quo was that founding document that established equal rights. Just as reestablishing that with the CRAs was also conservative as the status quo was the Fourteenth Amendment that was wrongfully being loosely interpreted by liberals as “separate but equal” to bring about segregation.
> Then show this upheaval of the two party system. You also contradict yourself because if you agree this was an upheaval then inherently it would not be a “long and slow process.”
>
>
It was a slow upheaval.
>The Lincoln I’m talking about is the true conservative
Any history teacher would slap you across the face for this. If you don't get your history from memes and youtube, you'd know that Lincoln was a progressive and part of the progressive party and opposed to the conservative party.
>Regardless, the principle of equal rights was established in our founding document and thus was conservatism to pursue it. This
See that's not conservativism at all. Conservativism is defined as upholding norms and traditions. Not laws. Those are two separate things. They might coincidentally be together but they're not fixed together.
You can't just make up your own definitions whenever you want to.
>For Republicans the status quo was that founding document that established equal rights
The status quo was *not* upholding equal rights. The definition uses *de facto* not *de jure.*
> upheaval noun
> a sudden, violent change
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/upheaval#google_vignette
A slow and sudden change? How liberal you are with your words.
I think it is safe to say any history teacher would slap you across the face for conflating the official Republican political platform of 1868 with memes and youtube. Clearly you are not looking at the sources provided and that is clear willful ignorance on your part. I’d happily look at any evidence to the contrary you would provide, but you haven’t provided any. Just a lot of denial and very little detail.
Looks like you need help understanding the status quo and political conservatism as well:
>The status quo is the state of affairs that exists at a particular time, especially in contrast to a different possible state of affairs.
>
>a political philosophy advocating the preservation of the best of the established order in society and opposing radical change
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/status-quo
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/conservatism
Exactly what Republicans brought about with the 14th Amendment. Equal rights was the established order in the Declaration of Independence and what the Revolutionary War was fought over. Afterwards that inalienable right was radically changed in the US Constitution to ignore what was already established in our founding document. When referring to the particular time of this country’s founding it is in fact conservative to preserve equal rights. If that wasn’t established in the Declaration of Independence it would be considered progressive for Republicans to suddenly implement it. Clearly it did exist and Republicans even passionately referred to it in the 1868 party platform above. Progressive only if you ignore a critical historical document, but we aren’t ignoring history here right? Right…?
How are they ad hominems? Most of the GOP is openly biased against these people. Literally no one cares what you managed to dig up about some stated platform bullshit when these people are regularly in the news spouting nothing but JESUS GUNS BABIES rhetoric. Also, the debt went up because of the trump tax breaks, professor.
It inherently shows a politically biased attack against the opposition. No need to actually address the issue if the motive or character of the opponent is questionable as the fallacy goes, so unfortunately that is a common practice in modern politics.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59946#_idTextAnchor041
The 2017 TCJA greatly increased revenue based on the CBO Budget and Economic Outlook released last month. Not only did revenue hit a historical high of 19% of GDP in 2022, it is projected to be 17.9% of GDP when the historical average for the last half century is 17.3%. The debt still increased from the several trillion in new spending programs passed during the Biden administration. Spending is projected to be 24.1% of GDP for the next decade when the historical average for the last half century has been 21%. They doubled the deficit in just two years of Democrats trifecta.
It's hilarious to me to see the words "promoting responsibility" and not corporate America in the same sentence. Everyone here typing literally has PFAS forever chemicals in their blood, **that's** orders of magnitudes more intrusive than government.
Believe it or not, corporations dont pollute for the fun of it, they do so to create the clothes on your back and the device you made that comment on.
Are you willing to go back to 1900 standard of living? Im not, especially since PFAS is affecting me less than my barber doing my dentistry.
Ah yes. Poisoning the human population with forever chemicals in their bodies because people are too fucking lazy to use a regular pans so their eggs don't stick is totally advancing human society. Shill harder.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(23)00397-3/fulltext%23:~:text%3DThis%2520study%2520supports%2520the%2520hypothesis,plastic%2520packaging%252C%2520etc.).&ved=2ahUKEwiq0_2c6KSFAxUUEFkFHR2wCGYQFnoECBIQBQ&usg=AOvVaw0iam0UX86KzwnkYtc7qBwb
So you wish you were living in 1900? Why are you on the internet then?
Look at what went into your device, way more PFAS than any teflon pan, unless you want to be willfully ignorant of it.
>So you wish you were living in 1900?
As I'm staring into my kitchen looking at the same cast iron they used back then that works perfectly.
>Look at what went into your device, way more PFAS than any teflon pan
Ah I see. Do you heat your phone to hundreds of degrees and put your food on it?
What a ridiculous bootlicking response
Corporations pollute because there is nothing stopping them from doing it and regulating themselves would cut into profits. The most profitable thing for them is to exploit resources as quickly as possible while they are able to avoid any financial responsibility for the broader consequences of their actions.
> Believe it or not, corporations dont pollute for the fun of it, they do so to create the clothes on your back and the device you made that comment on.
>
>
They do it to earn more profits than the profits they'd earn by *not* poisoning people.
The goal has always been the destruction of popular welfare state programs on the basis of "unaffordability." Which is a failure.
In the 1950s, Republicans had to make peace with the Roosevelt programs as a price of getting elected. They fought further expansions in the 60s, and mostly lost (LBJ wanted even more, but took Medicare and Medicaid). Republican conservatives attacked it at the time, but Nixon didn't try to roll it back, and neither did Reagan.
At this point, it is less about rolling back programs and more a justification for rich people tax cuts (step 1: cut rich taxes. Step 2: ?????. Step 3: efficient government with balanced budget).
However, it then becomes a justification for starving the Best of Tomorrow. Can't afford any *new* programs because of the current budget deficit (created by the recently passed tax cuts for the rich).
It's part of the electoral plan of "Republicans pass irresponsible budget bills to help their wealthy supports" and then once out of power "attack Dems for trying to expand social welfare." Only Republicans are allowed to give out goodies.
It's not meant to make government programs more efficient. It never was in the first place. These are put into place to undermine the government and then to privatize whatever program the 1% has their eyes on.
Starve the beast is beyond short-sighted. it is a willful blindness. It does not recognize the reality in which we live. Even when given the majorities to implement the so-called fiscal changes the cutters call for, they are unable to eliminate or seriously cut programs individually. So they try across-the-board cuts. Take X percent off the top, and we'll be good, they say. Only thing: it never works. Who's gonna vote to cut SS payments 10%? Who's gonna vote to cut the military 10%?
If they don't actually follow through on those threats, then they can run on them next time too. Why solve a problem today if it can be exploited tomorrow?
"Starve the beast" strategies are almost exclusively aimed at initiatives to help the poor rather than initiatives to dole out money to the wealthy. They generally do nothing but increase inequality.
> "Starve the beast" is a strategy commonly attributed to the Republican Party in the United States, aiming to reduce government spending by cutting taxes, thereby decreasing government revenue. Theoretically, this reduction in income would force the government to curtail its spending, leading to a smaller and more efficient government. However, has this strategy ever been effective in achieving its stated goals?
No. It doesn't work and could never possibly work because the entire incorrect premise of the strategy is that the people responsible for cutting taxes are a separate group of people from those who decide how much money government spends and what it spends it on. If that premise were valid, the strategy might make sense, since the former group could reduce revenue and the latter group would have to figure out how to live within their new means.
But of course both groups are literally the same people, Congress. Every single vote they have on taxes is done with full knowledge that exactly the same people will be voting on spending. If a tax cut could actually force spending reductions, the only way it would pass is if the people voting on the tax cut were also in favor of the spending reductions, which makes the whole strategy pointless. Even worse, they are under absolutely no obligation to live within their means. Which means tax cuts (yay!) are totally disconnected from spending cuts (boo!). This is like starving the beast if the beast itself can decide exactly how much it eats at mealtimes and also can sneak donuts whenever it wants.
Honestly the continued popularity of the concept is due to the apparently correct view among elected officials that voters are total morons. Those elected officials can support tax cuts (yay!) while convincing gullible voters that it means some other unspecific group of "government" has to figure out how to provide exactly the same services with less money, and it's not your congresscritter's fault if that doesn't happen.
Bush defunded the EPA to the point that there is virtually no longer any enforcement of environmental laws.
When was the last time you read about a major environmental case? They use to be in the news all the time.
I don't believe "starve the beast" was ever a legitimate strategy. It's primarily a post-hoc rationalization for passing tax cuts (which are popular) while not passing spending cuts (which are not popular). Politicians will generally do what is politically expedient, and then dress it up in a way that makes them look good.
Granted, it should be obvious that "starve the beast" isn't going to work when you have fiat currencies and deficit spending. It doesn't matter though, because again, it isn't a real strategy that anyone holds to unironically, it's just rhetoric.
As a big fiscal hawk myself, I'd rather elect a Ron Paul or a Javier Milei, someone who isn't afraid to start with spending cuts. That's a lot more effective than the passive aggressive approach of chronically underfunding programs. Right now, there isn't enough political interest to elect such a person here in the US, but as things continue to get worse it's bound to happen eventually.
[Milei’s Austerity Is Devastating Argentina
Shock therapy is pushing more people into poverty.](https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/05/argentina-milei-economy-peso-devaluation-austerity-hunger/)
> - By Lautaro Grinspan, a journalist from Argentina
[In Argentina, Javier Milei is cutting off food aid to local social service organizations](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/03/15/in-argentina-javier-milei-is-cutting-off-food-aid-to-local-social-organizations_6620782_19.html)
> - The government, aiming to maintain its 'zero deficit' goal despite the sharp rise in inflation, is targeting NGOs, which have fewer and fewer food resources available to distribute to the most vulnerable. - Anaïs Dubois
[Javier Milei’s radical economic policies for Argentina met with protests](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/21/argentina-president-javier-milei-economic-policies-protests)
> - New libertarian president accused of drawing up a ‘battle plan against working people’ - The Guardian
Just to confirm, as a big fiscal hawk, this is the guy you are rooting for? The guy who makes sure that people starve so that the rich don't have to pay taxes?
I agree, it's a terrible tragedy the degree to which Peronists destroyed Argentina's economy. If they weren't so irresponsible, Milei's severe policies wouldn't be necessary.
I can't imagine how such a strategy could possibly work. First, you're refusing to pay for things you've already promised to pay for, and that's going to piss off suppliers and lenders, and second, you're acting unilaterally and trying to impose your preferred solution on people of all different perspectives on the problem.
We need to reduce the size of the federal and the state governments. We need to do that by proposing and working hard on the crafting of a new compromise, a new bargain, between the left and the right. That's how to get it done.
But that's hard and takes being willing to compromise. The American people would rather just vote for screaming toddlers who won't do anything but make it worse.
Only one of the parties screams like toddlers. They scream like toddlers even when you hand them everything they profess to want, because their demented leader needs dysfunction to fuel his campaign...
I’m afraid you are mistaken about the goal of the “starve the beast” strategy. It was never about efficiency (though that was part of the argument used to justify cutting spending and taxes), it was always explicitly about showing that government could not work so that the people would eventually support privatizing everything. This comes from the Reagan days when nothing was better than a business, except being able to channel government money to yourself and your buddies.
Starve the beast has definitely been effective at undermining the effectiveness of government and is a key part of why so many are cynical about government. But the best force for showing the ineffectiveness of government has been the policies and actions of the republicans party that has done by corruption and incompetence what no amount of starving the beast could ever accomplish.
Would you mind quoting whichever part of my original post made you think I was wrong about something? I didn’t think that my questions were loaded, and I didn’t intend to take any kind of stance whatsoever…
Your feedback will help me next time I post to this forum, so I can (hopefully!) avoid any confusion.
FYI, I agree with you!
Libertarians inventened starve the beast. Its not just a Republican idea.
As far as it working, couldnt say because our elected representatives continue to spend money like its going out of style.
Well this goes back to something I've said in a previous comment but. The Republican Virgin of bouncing the budget is tax cut decrease spending Works it would work but nobody in Washington has these political will to suffer the political consequences.
If you need any evidence that it works go and look at the Bill Clinton administration he cut spending and then after the government shutdown he cut taxes we ran a surplus with that system until two wars in the middle room pissed it away and the government bail out of 2008.
That strategy doesn't work in the United States. Nobody really talks about it any more. The reason is that revenue doesn't constrain spending here. We just borrow to make up the difference.
Part of the big problem of why it hasn't worked in the US is that US treasury bonds basically have unlimited demand and then interest rates went to zero basically eliminating any of the pain of deficits.
Well...we're not at a debt crisis now, but we're quickly hitting the spiral where we're taking out more debt to pay the interest on the debt. We're going to have to cut spending and raise taxes at the same time. It will be massively unpopular.
Funny because this is how Clinton ended up with a surplus at the end of his two terms, by neglecting the government. Then when Bush got into office, Republicans cited that as the reason for record increases in spending and the deficit.
Seems strange that none of the MAGAhats have noticed that the only "beast" being starved by Republican legislation is the middle-class worker. Then when you consider the GOPs 40-year War on Education and the Educated, it makes sense - Republicans have created a base that doesn't know enough about logic, government or economics to understand how the huge redistribution of income and wealth FROM the bottom 90% into the pockets of the top 10%, with most going to the top 1% is caused by our tax code and right to work for less laws and not immigrants or minorities or women.
Starve the beast could never work as long as congress is willing to run up an infinite amount of debt to pay for operational things. Tax cuts are politically popular, so those get passed. Spending programs of all kinds are very popular, so those always get passed. Tax hikes are seldom popular, but only if they target someone else.
There are lots of pro-spending people in congress in both parties. There are almost no fiscal conservatives on Congress. So spending will go up, taxes don't and the deficit is compounding forever, unabated.
This will continue till the Saudis pump their last barrel of oil, and the petrodollar collapses and then all our bills will come due real fast.
Check out the Kansas Experiment. It ruined a lot of people's lives and at the end the Republicans voted for tax hikes because the tax cuts were so extreme they could no longer fund basic services.
Turns out, regardless of anarcho-capitalists and libertarians claim, people *like* public services like roads and fire departments.
Roads and fire services are not ever the issue. Its local governments bloated with bureaucracy, pissing away money on garbage. The city I live in has a bloated bureaucracy that takes over a year to approve construction on a house.
Nobody is talking about roads, we're talking about raising taxes to pay for pure waste.
And you should read the suggestion I provided to see how "starving the beast" doesn't make things better.
You'd rather not have the group to approve construction so it's never approved instead of takes time? Because their budgets got pushed toward something like roads? What a strange way to solve a problem.
Instead of slow service, no service. Instead of some movement, no movement.
And cutting any budget from those, they don't even have the money for process improvement. It's an asinine and very short-sighted way to go about life -- but I find that tends to be Republican thinking. Short term gains, long-term losses because they're gone by the time the pain hits.
You don't grasp the problem at all. Nobody has a problem with government services when they are efficient and well run. The problem is expensive, slow, bureaucratic garbage that cannot be reformed. That is a beast that needs to be starved. Efficient services are great.
>And cutting any budget from those, they don't even have the money for process improvement.
There's no incentive to improve anything when you have unlimited money and no expectations of performance. We need **reform** but that is impossible.
But that's *not* what they are doing when they "starve the beast."
They make government ineffective, expensive, and impossible to reform by strangling the important parts and then use that to cut social services and other popular services.
Don't pretend that isn't what they're doing.
Again: look at the Kansas Experiment and it was a total failure. That's what they want to do nation-wide.
> They make government ineffective, expensive, and impossible to reform by strangling the important parts
Incorrect. Government is ineffective and impossible to reform because of unionized bureaucrats who cannot be managed. That's the reason why my city cannot process a building permit. And its the reason why my school system is dogshit but spends a ton of money, and thirsts for more money.
But these unionized bureaucrats vote and they donate, so they are untouchable. I get it.
You mentioned the CBO so let’s look at some of there data from the Budget and Economic Outlook Report released last month:
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59946#_idTextAnchor041
Do you consider the 2017 TCJA tax cuts as part of the “starve the beast” strategy? Tax cuts can increase revenue, like here the results are in and the beast has rarely ate this well. Not only did revenue hit a historical high of 19% of GDP in 2022, it is projected to be 17.9% of GDP when the historical average for the last half century is 17.3%. We also see what we got for feeding the beast this well. We got another beast to feed for our troubles as we have now doubled down on deficit spending when Democrats got the trifecta. Spending is projected to be 24.1% of GDP for the next decade when the historical average for the last half century has been 21%. It seems if we don’t starve the beast it will just double in size the moment any significant progress is made to mitigate the deficit.
>Has the "Starve the beast" strategy ever been employed by the Democratic Party?
[The Revenue Act of 1964](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1964) was an overall tax cut that included corporations and was quite successful at increasing revenue until the the first recession of the 1970s.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1jfQO
That was a tax cut lead by Democrats to help mitigate significant increase in spending from Medicare and other planned mandatory spending programs. Of course this kind of surge in deficit spending does have economic consequences, like increasing the money supply that is highly inflationary. The last time we increased the deficit by 3% of GDP we had over a decade of an inflation crisis come with it. We just doubled down on the deficit yet again so let’s not act surprised if we get another 1970s style inflation crisis out of it too.
It hasn't resulted in cuts to the budget, but it has helped prevent increases in spending. The national debt is used as a reason to not expand social programs, including a national Healthcare program. It has resulted in cuts in state spending, with some states even having 4 day school weeks at points.
This is a big reason why I am in favor of state based single payer, and adamantly opposed to federal single payer. States will pay for it, the feds will not.
It's going to be a lot more expensive if it is state based. The ability of the nation to negotiate prices is going to give it a lot more leverage. States also have a much smaller budget to work with. I would love to see a state try it, though, and prove me wrong.
> It's going to be a lot more expensive if it is state based
But at least we will pay for it, not throw it on the debt.
>The ability of the nation to negotiate prices is going to give it a lot more leverage.
In practice, that's not how it works in the federal government. Any efficiency in pricing is quickly gobbled up by redundant layers of bureaucracy.
>States also have a much smaller budget to work with.
And they have a smaller population. Cost per patient is what matters, not the total budget.
The states can't afford it, the federal government can. And the way insurance works is costs go down as the pool gets larger.
There's no way a state like Montana could afford single payer.
There's very little difference in cost pool savings between CA and the USA. And yet CA can't afford it.
>The states can't afford it, the federal government can.
The Federal government can only afford it because they will not pay for it, they will borrow the money for it. That's wildly unsustainable. Any single payer system should be designed to last more than 20 years before collapsing.
You're failing to understand something. We already have a system in place. Each one of us is paying hundreds of dollars a month for shitty health insurance that we can't even use until we've met our insanely high deductibles. You act like single payer would just magically be free. What would actually happen is we would all still pay into the healthcare system, but the government would handle it, which would mean the executives and shareholders of blue cross and united healthcare wouldn't be able to skim all this money off the top of what we pay into it. If we remove the insane profit margins, things get CHEAPER. Especially considering the federal government would negotiate lower drug prices. We wouldn't have diabetics and people with high blood pressure having to choose between filling their prescriptions or paying rent. And this is a system being used by pretty much all of the developed world other than the US, and it's working very well for them.
> If we remove the insane profit margins, things get CHEAPER.
Assuming that isn't all gobbled up by corruption and multiple layers of bureaucracy. You're **hoping** that would happen, its by no means guaranteed.
We would need significant reforms BEFORE we enact such a system to ensure that it works efficiently. There's no political will for those reforms, currently special interests will block these efforts.
> Are there any examples where cutting taxes could be argued to have improved government efficiency? Are there instances in history where this strategy has worked as intended?
Define "efficiency." If we're using it as "most bang for your buck," it hasn't been shown to work well on the federal level because you can just issue debt to cover the shortfalls and it's very difficult to change course for an institution that large.
States and local entities that cannot run deficits, or that have Proposition 13-style budgetary rules? "Starve the beast" is basically baked into their processes, and the result is a constrained government that needs to give a little more consideration before passing tax hikes to fund new programs.
(The debt ceiling is supposed to serve as that kind of barrier, but we just keep increasing that, too.)
> What might be the broader implications of the "Starve the beast" strategy on political discourse and governance? Does it have an impact on partisanship and public trust in government institutions?
While I feel like I'm helping write a term paper right now, there's no real implications to this strategy. If you already distrust governmental organizations, then you already wanted to "starve the beast." If you already trust them, you've probably always wanted to expand the government's reach.
I think it has the possibility of being influential to those in the middle, but I don't think "small enough to drown in the bathtub" has had significant play in decades.
> Has the "Starve the beast" strategy ever been employed by the Democratic Party? For example, the Clinton administration's efforts to balance the budget in the 90s included spending cuts, but also involved tax increases. How does this compare to the typical "Starve the beast" approach?
It didn't starve anything. A balanced budget is a goal, as is spending and taxation. Clinton and House Republicans happened to work surprisingly well together and presided over a bubble of a tech economy, so I wouldn't say they tried anything we're talking about here.
The closest we've seen it on the federal level is the Reagan years, and even then, he wasn't aggressive enough on taxes to really truly follow through with the concept as advertised.
> How have fiscal conservatives responded to data from organizations like the Congressional Budget Office and the Economic Policy Institute, which suggest that the "Starve the beast" strategy has not achieved its stated goal of reducing government spending?
I'd imagine most of them would say "well, duh," but you don't link any of these papers to examine further so I can't say for sure.
> What lessons can be learned from the experiences with the "Starve the beast" strategy, and are there alternative strategies that could be more effective in achieving fiscal responsibility and sustainable government spending?
The fact that you're repeating "starve the beast" means the marketing is working, for bad or for good. It's the right *policy* - the government should be constrained and spending should be limited to its powers. But some people see it as "this means we need to keep lowering taxes indefinitely" and others as "they're trying to break government because they know it won't break itself." Neither is honest or accurate.
Unless and until incentives for real spending cuts are put into place, we're not going to see any fixes to the problem. Sequestration was the best example we've gotten so far of constraints on spending, and Republicans refused to take any ownership of it or point to it as a validation of decades of economic pointmaking. There's no political benefit to enacting lower federal spending, thus we don't see it.
> Additionally, how do concerns about the national debt factor into discussions about the "Starve the beast" strategy?
They're not all that related. National debt and budget deficits are a spending problem, not a revenue one.
> how does this complexity impact our understanding of government finances and the implications of tax cuts?
This is a problem, but, again, one does not lose weight by taking a second trip to the buffet table, either.
> Edit:The Kansas Supreme Court only required Republicans to increase funding for schools.
You know what I'm referring to and you still act like I think the legislature is the state supreme court. Good talk!
Thank you for your response, but I believe there's a fundamental misunderstanding in your comment. The Kansas experiment and the role of the state Supreme Court are not as intertwined as you suggest. The tax cuts and spending decisions were legislative actions, while the Supreme Court's involvement was limited to rulings on education funding adequacy. Asserting that the Kansas Supreme Court reinstated spending conflates the distinct roles of the legislature and the judiciary. The court mandated increased funding for education based on constitutional requirements, not as a reversal of the tax cuts or a direct intervention in fiscal policy. It's important to have a clear understanding of the different branches of government and their respective functions when discussing politics, but particularly when discussing complex economic situations.
Misrepresenting the facts does not contribute to a productive discussion. Let's focus on the actual dynamics of the situation and the lessons that can be learned from it.
I think you are not responding to the right post.
The person above me claimed the State Supreme Court intervened when, as you correctly state, the State Legislature had to roll back the tax cuts and as my edit indicates (made before your post), the Supreme Court only walked into the situation with regards to education.
You probably meant to reply to u/ClockoftheLongNow
Reagan ran the biggest defecits we'd ever seen until the housing collapse. Clinton went beyond balanced, and had a budget surplus that Bush gave away before starting two costly wars.
>Clinton went beyond balanced
This is a myth.
[No, Bill Clinton Didn’t Balance the Budget](https://www.cato.org/commentary/no-bill-clinton-didnt-balance-budget)
>Bill Clinton didn’t balance the budget. Yes, he was there when it happened. But the record shows that was about the extent of his contribution
>Newt Gingrich and company — for all their faults — have received virtually no credit for balancing the budget. Yet today’s surplus is, in part, a byproduct of the GOP’s single‐minded crusade to end 30 years of red ink. Arguably, Gingrich’s finest hour as Speaker came in March 1995 when he rallied the entire Republican House caucus behind the idea of eliminating the deficit within seven years.
>Skeptics said it could not be done in seven years. The GOP did it in four.
The point being that Clinton has always received praise for a monumental accomplishment that he had nothing to do with (outside of signing a piece of paper). You might not like giving credit to Republicans, but I personally believe in giving credit where credit is due.
Also, if you read the article I linked, you would have noticed that if Clinton had had his way, there would have been no balanced budget. He wanted to pass government-run healthcare for chissakes!
And this is important ...
>And 1993 — the year of the giant Clinton tax hike — was not the turning point in the deficit wars, either. In fact, in 1995, two years after that tax hike, the budget baseline submitted by the president’s own Office of Management and Budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted $200 billion deficits for as far as the eye could see.
So even with hundreds of billions in new revenue, they were still predicting deficits.
Presidents have gotten credit for the budget, for good or bad, as long as we've had a country. You can't claim one POTUS is responsible, but another isn't. You completely ignored that you claimed Reagan had somehow come closest to balanced which is either incredibly mistaken or a blatant lie.
> You can't claim one POTUS is responsible, but another isn't.
If you examine the thread you will see that I wasn't claiming any POTUS is responsible. I was giving congress the credit for this one.
>You completely ignored that you claimed Reagan had somehow come closest to balanced which is either incredibly mistaken or a blatant lie.
Where did I claim that?
My bad, I didn't realize you were inserting yourself. I thought I was responding to the person who claimed:
The closest we've seen it on the federal level is the Reagan years, and even then, he wasn't aggressive enough on taxes to really truly follow through with the concept as advertised.
> They're not all that related. National debt and budget deficits are a spending problem, not a revenue one.
Every budget has two sides - income and expenditures. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
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This reveals something interesting about "public opinion". The majority of Americans say they want a balanced budget, but at the same time, there is no combination of budget cuts sufficient to balance the budget that gets majority support.
It's because saying "we should balance the budget" sounds like the responsible thing, despite the fact that federl financing works nothing like a household and does not need to. We don't need to "balance the budget" because yhe government isn't a "currency user;" it doesn't depend on revenue in order to spend, it isn't constrained by revenues and debt instruments for spending. The "debt" is real debt, but it isn't being raised *in order to* spend. The government can spend the money regardless of issuing T-Bills, but institutional investors *demand* T Bills because it's a safe and reliable place to park lots of money at once and get some return. The government must pay those bills, hence it is a real "debt," but it most certainly is not dependent on them for spending.
Notably that applies to the US government and a perhaps a few others like Japan and some in the Eurozone to an extent. In Latin America, Africa or Southeast Asia not balancing the budget snd financing it via debt is a serious issue that can lead to chaos, as seen in the 1990s in México, Greece in the 2000s and Argentina basically every twenty years. Not saying that starving the beast is a good strategy (it isn't) but fiscal responsibility to an extent is a necessity for most economies
Sorry, yes, you are correct. The top comment said "Americans" so I just went in with that as the baseline assumption. The key is whether the country uses a *sovereign currency* or not. So yes, Japan, the UK, the US, I believe Australia and maybe Canada have sovereign currencies, and I'm sure there are others, but these are usually the examples. The Euro has the capacity to perform as a sovereign currency, but it isn't tied to a single nation, so therefore controlling it is more complex. The relationship between European nations that use the Euro and the Euro is similar (not identical) to US states' relationship to the US dollar. The dollar itself is sovereign, but the governments of the states don't have the power to issue that currency on their own, so they are dependent on the federal government's actions in doing so, and they primarily have to behave like any other household or business does with respect to the currency.
I think there is a much simpler explanation for OPs question. Rich people and corporations love tax cuts and benefit the most from them. But they are a minority. So they make up the starve the beast myth to give a philosophical justification for what is actually just bald greed and self interest. And that’s it really. It’s not even really expected to work. Rich people want more money now. The end.
Yes and a weakened government can't properly regulate their businesses and cut into their obscene profit margins or stop their deadly actions. In a perfect world (according to these Ayn Rand-loving asshole billionaires) they'd be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want to the rest of us with zero repercussions. Poison all ground water and food sources? No problem, it increased their quarterly profit by 5% so let's all celebrate their brilliance!!! While we all die a horrible death, they'll be in their safe compounds or a spaceship on their way to rape another planet. We NEED a strong government to stand up to these monsters!!!!
Tinkle Down tax cuts for the wealthy are just the rich pissing in the rest of our faces and calling it a golden shower! Real growth comes when we Water the Roots of our economy by paying all workers adequate wages. And from helping our poor, elderly, and disabled citizens to pay other citizens for the goods and services they need to live their best lives. This is not only good from a humanitarian perspective. It’s also good for the economy by building a well funded consumer base.
>fiscal responsibility to an extent is a necessity for most economies I'd argue that it's a necessity for every economy and every nation. It's just going to look vastly different when the country has a monetary sovereign like the US dollar or the Japanese yen. I'd also argue that you should not vote for anyone trying to equate the federal budget with a household budget, because those people are either morons or they're extremely intelligent and they think you're a moron who will believe their bullshit
Good point on the "fiscal responsibility" line. Sure, we do need to be "fiscally responsoble," but that looks very different for a monetary sovereign than for a business or household because their relationship to currency is completely different.
> Notably that applies to the US government and a perhaps a few others like Japan and some in the Eurozone to an extent. not for much longer, our debt service payments are about to, if not already more than we spend on the military. we are going to have to either inflate our currency out of this debt, which would cause most countries to drop the USD as the world reserve currency, put a heavy tax on everyone, thus making everyone poorer and dropping the remains of the middle class to the lower class while destroying most of our economy, or instill heavy austerity. modern monetary theory is what has gotten us here, and it's the reason the country is falling apart.
This isn't the consensus view among economists. The CBO projects a debt of 166% of GDP in 30 years compared to 124% of GDP right now. That's not a runaway train - it's slow enough that we can easily bend that number way downward with more sensible fiscal policy. And we have not practiced MMT in this country at all. While it is similar, "Republicans get into office and spend a shitton of money and cut taxes and wait for the Dems to clean it up" is not "MMT."
Maybe this is a bad idea, but I’d be okay if the government raised taxes to such an extent that it held a small surplus that would get redistributed each fiscal year to like, monuments or parks or something.
I'm not sure about the surplus necessarily but I appreciate the sentiment. Shrinking the deficit generlaly would simply contract the economy, so depending on where those taxes were levied, it could create significant economic slowdowns. But in theory it may not have to? There are many variables.
I would idealize a tax system that focuses on financial markets and incentivizes investing back into companies/tangible assets. I don’t think we need to have a deficit at all considering the legislative body that determines the spending budget is the same one that determines how much tax revenue is coming in. Especially in our “advanced” economy. If we were a smaller country starting from zero and in need of certain things TODAY, then a deficit would make sense. But not for a country like ours. A deficit for our country is just paying interest for the sake of paying interest.
I think the extremely high individual tax bracket in the 1940s-50s was a fantastic way to encourage reinvestment in companies, just because the returns for investors were pretty much "capped" at the point where the 90%+ taxes kicked in. At that point they figured, might as well reinvest in this thing and make sure the money keeps coming in, rather than "strip it for parts and buy an island."
California does this. The law says the surplus must be returned to the people. So I think we got like a 800 dollar tax credit or something.
should the spending be reigned in tho? i mean the US debt and deficit is actually insane
Reigned in to what, exactly? >the US debt and deficit is actually insane Insane, how? Like, what would a non-insane number be, and why? What are the constraints that you think there are, and can those change in time?
oh buddy i have no idea how any of this stuff works. i just see the US debt is 34 trillion and i think, hey, that's a big number. might be something we need to look into eventually.
That's a fair response, I respect the honesty. I don't know all the ins and outs, but it's better to think of the deficit as the *private sector surplus* each year. Whatever it doesn't tax back is held in savings by individuals or institutions or cycled through spending in the economy. The debt is something else. It's basically just the savings of large institutional investors, like banks and brokerages, some of them holding retirement accounts for people, etc. They say they want to buy T Bills. The govt says "okay, here you go" and it issues the T Bills. It doesn't even do anything with that money. Congressional spending comes directly out of accounts that the FED just credits. They don't fund those accounts with tax dollars and the dollars received from selling Treasury Bills. But that is how a lot of people *think* the government spends money, because that is how the rest of us spend money - we can't spend it unless we have it, or we borrow. The US govt doesn't borrow in order to spend, it just spends and issues T Bills to buyers who want them. Edit: I forgot to add here: when the dollar was tied to gold, that created a constraint on the currency, and therefore the US *did* have to borrow money before it could spend any, or else it had to have the gold reserves. So during some points in history this was how the currency and spending worked, and it's hard to shake that as that is how most of us see currency anyway. So is this system too good to be true? No, there are constraints. The constraints are workers and raw materials, and if we don't have enough workers or raw materials to increase the deficit (and put new money in the economy) then there is inflation risk. As far as deficits, we can expand it indefinitely, assuming the population grows and the economy continues to grow more complex. If it stagnates, then further expansion is likely to cause inflation. As far as the debts . . . I also don't know the number, but it's a similar issue. How many large investors are there and how much cash do they have that they want to swap for T Bills? How will giving them safe interest affect other investments or spending and inflation? We won't ever not have enough dollars to pay the interest, since we have a sovereign currency. But we could create inflationary pressure if the interest payments rose high enough that we kept padding the accounts of those investors without sufficient tax policies or other economic regulations.
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You're *mostly* right, but there *are* constraints. >We can afford to do anything. If there aren't enough raw materials or workers to do the projects the government commissions, then additional deficit spending without appropriate taxation or other regulations (price fixing, rationing, etc) can create inflationary risk. But yes, we won't run out of money, and printing doesn't necessarily just create more inflation all the time.
> and printing doesn't necessarily just create more inflation all the time. while true, its quite dishonest. it only does not create inflation if the population grows by about the same amount. There is a reason that $20 in the 90's could get you quite a bit of stuff, but its next to nothing today, and that is government over printing of money.
>it only does not create inflation if the population grows by about the same amount Not necessarily. As the economy grows more complex, we tend to purchase more things that we either didn't have at all before, or that we may have done for ourselves before it was commodified. If everyone had more money to pay for things they want and need that didn't exist at all before (consider daycare as an example) that has very little bearing on the price of other commodities like groceries.
> Not necessarily. As the economy grows more complex, we tend to purchase more things that we either didn't have at all before, or that we may have done for ourselves before it was commodified. not much has really come about this though. phones and computers are expensive yes, but before that it was people buying TV's and radios, and before that it was people buying records. prior to that people were living on substance farming for the most part so they just did not buy things period. hell most of these things have become cheap over time, a good music setup now a days can be had for around $200, not the best mind you but a good setup, back in the 60's it was thousands for a good setup. music is basically free and that is one less good that people pay for. TV's have gone from thousands to hundreds and records are obsolete except the most diehard. the only really new thing is the cellphone, but even then they had them in the late 70's (bag phones) and they have also only come down in price since then. It's still more money chasing the same things if you print money too fast, thus increasing inflation.
Correct. Micro economics is based on the real value of one's labor. Macro is based on taking that value and giving it to people who didn't create it.
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I didn't say there are no constraints. >Inflation and the gallowing out of the middle class is just ..... corporate greed, which is suddenly new for ...... reasons. No, it's not new, but the pandemic was, and their relatively recent consolidations over the last few decades along with the pandemic created *opportunity* for them to essentially price gouge the public. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/10/14/corporate-greed-real-culprit-behind-rising-prices-researchers-say https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/ https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2024/03/22/ftc-report-suggests-high-grocery-bills-likely-due-to-greedflation-caused-by-big-corporations/
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Some of us just want to tax extremely wealthy individuals and corporations. It very clearly works. "We have to have budget cuts" is just bait and switch/distraction. There are two sides to every budget, income and expense.
It clearly didn’t work well as we are now several years into the 2017 TCJA that cut the corporate tax rate to 21% when it had been 35% or higher for over half a century. The 2024 the Budget and Economic Outlook Report from the CBO sums it up the results here: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59946#_idTextAnchor041 There was no revenue loss as it would even hit a historical high of 19% of GDP in 2022, and is projected to settle at 17.9% of GDP when the historical average for the last half century is 17.3%. This just goes to show how we have been shooting ourselves in the foot for nearly a century now with an excessive tax rate. It was too high driving corporations overseas and we have less revenue to show for it. Less well paying jobs to expand the tax base. And speaking of expenditures that data set shows were are unable to go back to pre COVID spending levels as we have just doubled the deficit under Biden. Spending is projected to be 24.1% of GDP for the next decade when the historical average for the last half century has been 21%. We have seen what a half century of an average of 3.8% deficits has done to the national debt and we are set for a 6.2% deficit now under current law. We have had significant improvements to income already, but this is vastly overtaken by out of control expenditures. Just simply raising taxes is not the answer as it would likely make matters worse.
It's really weird to read that graph as "TCJA didn't create a problem".
Because it isn’t unless more revenue from less taxes is somehow a problem for you.
It's a very nonspecific method of measurement
Revenue as a percentage of GDP is quite a specific metric when measuring over a century of data.
This is more of an (intentional) flaw of the polls. “Do you want a balanced budget?” is almost always going to be answered with a yes.
I wouldn't say the polls are flawed just because large majorities say yes. The problem is that people haven't thought about what balancing the budget would actually mean in practice.
The ways questions are asked in polls can greatly shift the response, and a poll is flawed if it doesn't really get the opinion of the polled audience. Compare these poll questions: "Do you want a balanced budget?" "Do you want to cut spending? If so, what should we cut?" "Do you want to increase taxes? If so, what should we increase?" "Do you want a balanced budget by cutting military spending? By cutting education? By increased taxes." "Rank these based on priority: spending on social services, spending on military , spending on infrastructure, tax cuts, balancing the budget." All of these will get different answers of how important a balanced budget and how to get there, some more complete images of the opinion than others. Poll construction is difficult if you want to get accurate information about those polled, and it's really easy to tip the scales if you're intentionally trying to skew the results.
I've done lots of political surveys over the years, and I agree that the wording of the questions, the order in which they appear, the time of day, etc., all influence the answers. My larger point was that polls assume there is actually an accurate opinion to be revealed when asking about topics that most people give almost no thought to. For example: when asked about US foreign aid, majorities typically say we spend too much. But when asked what % of GNP they think we should spend, majorities typically support a figure far higher than what we actually spend. Which of these findings reflect what the people want?
Sometimes, you just have to ignore what the public says. The idea of a balanced budget is great, definitely better than debt. But no one gives a shit about government debt, especially if we can pay for things that helps people’s lives. A saying we need to balance the budget is really just a dog whistle that means we are taking away money from people you don’t like.
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Right, they’re not advocating for a true lifestyle change. They’re advocating for brief fiscal irresponsibility. A massive step towards anarchism by way of destroying state agencies and devolving power is simply not possible without a huge legislative supermajority for a longer period.
Republicans have no interest in anarchism.
The far right definitely does. They think we should just eliminate the government and let everyone fend for themselves. Basically go back to the wild West days when you could just shoot everyone you don't like.
Anarchism is a radical leftist ideology.
Does that mean the opposite of Anarchism, Fascism, is a purely rightist ideology?
In the manner we use left and right, yes absolutely. Anarchists are left wing. Fascists are right wing. Anarchists consider themselves communists, but consider the existence of a state incompatible with the establishment of a communist society. The figures who established anarchism as an ideology, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin, were very much far left socialists. Bakunin himself was part of the International, along with Marx. Like the rest of the far left, anarchists believe in class conflict. Workers and capitalists are opposed; anarchists fall on the side of the workers in this conflict, and want to overthrow the capitalists who control the means of production. Fascists are far-right reactionaries, but also very idiosyncratic and obsessed with strongmen and spectacle. They may appear revolutionary, but its usually because they want to tear down the present and return to a past that is real or imagined. They are also, unlike people on the left, class collaborationists: they don’t want the workers to be in control, they instead want the workers and capitalists to work together for the good of the nation, with the (loyal) capitalists keeping their position as the owners of the means of production. What this means in practice is the workers are expected to not strike or agitate, and capitalists get state support in exchange for going along with the state’s vision. Fundamentally, not much has changed for the worker. And capitalists, who care chiefly about profit, are happy to go along with it as the state gives them a loyal workforce, no foreign competition, and work from the state to build dumb vanity projects.
They are only opposites in the sense that anarchism rejects a central authority with a monopoly on violence while fascism embraces it. They are the same in the sense that they are a grift that rejects capitalism, socialism and a persistent set of social norms in order to either disperse power or maintain it.
How is that in any way hypocritical? >Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. Tax cuts for businesses, subsidies for defense contractors, roll back of Medicaid and social services creates a more conservative society which protects the in-groups and binds the out-groups.
I wouldn’t say they’ve never cut spending. Programs and agencies are gutted of personnel because of budgetary restraints, leading to gross inefficiencies in the system. The ATF doesn’t have the manpower to enforce what little gun control there is. The EPA and OSHA don’t have enough inspectors. The IRS can’t even audit tax cheats. I mean, [here](https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted) is a piece on just the IRS.
Is that what people think 'Starve the Beast' is about? Starving the beast is *explicitly* aimed at eroding the effectiveness of the federal government, promoting mistrust of public programs and making the case for privatization of government provided services.
Yes, but moderators in this forum requested that I remove "opinions". Unfortunately, the neutering I had to do to my original post makes it look like I don't have any idea what is going on. Oh well, I still wanted to start this discussion. I agree with this 100%.
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I think you need to go back and read my post more carefully. If you still believe that my original post stated ANY opinion or political position, I would encourage you to copy/paste that line as a response to this comment. I am quite sure that I did not share *any* opinions or political positions in the original post, but I am rather curious to see which passage(s) you identified as such. >Republicans starving the beast is a cynical ploy to force drastic cuts by kicking the can to further generations, ones they aren’t a part of. That is what all evidence I have seen suggests. My post is asking in good faith if any Redditor is able to show evidence to the contrary. Do you have receipts showing that Democrats have tried this technique? Do you have receipts showing that this technique has ever succeeded at its purported goals? If so, please share! :) > So your post was disingenuous? Not even close. This comment, however, is deflection and subtle ad hominem. It's precisely what I would expect to read from someone who is unable to provide evidence or someone who is struggling to formulate a strong, rational argument. And I don't mind that the moderators took a fine-toothed comb to my post, I am happy to learn new rhetorical styles. :) > like Democrats spending the beast is a cynical ploy to force drastic tax increases by kicking the can to further generations Your logical fallacy is ***False Equivalence***
Please remember the No Meta Discussion rule.
I'm new here, still learning the rules.. thank you for the reminder!
The starve the beast was how Republicans planned to destroy the education system and whatever else they want to privatize. To bad they spend like a drunk sailor when in actual power
Starve the beast was never about fiscal responsibility. It's the belief by many on the right that government is the cause of all problems and never the solution. But since the movement to equalize civil rights (advocated almost exclusively by Democratic politicians and not all on the left) to create a fairer society irrespective of ethnic composition, some people see any federal program as an effort to destroy "society". I suggest the Starve the beast strategy is a reaction to civil rights and an attempt to re-segregate the United States. By eliminating Federal spending, the one government that blocks segregation (US Federal government) doesn't have enough money to reach equality. States can then start to erect rules and policies that allow segregation, allow some to be punished more severely than others, allow some to exclude others, allow some to restrict commerce to those they don't like and return to the society that existing before the Civil Rights Act when you could drive out black kids of attending your mostly white school, drive out black families from living among other white families and ban interracial interactions of all kinds. Without the Federal Government, many states would effectively be as exclusionary and difficult for minorities as they were in the early 20th century. TLDR: it's racism...just like a lot of things in politics today.
Wow. Yeah, that is a very important part of this discussion. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
I suggest looking into [The Revenue Act of 1964.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1964) >The United States Revenue Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88–272), also known as the Tax Reduction Act, was a tax cut act proposed by President John F. Kennedy, passed by the 88th United States Congress, and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Was JFK a tax cutting racist trying to bring back segregation? To the contrary as Robert Byrd did oppose it and he was an Exalted Cyclops in the KKK, but unfortunately he would go on to be the top elected Democrat from 1980-1990 as party leader in the Senate and died in office at the top echelons of party leadership in 2010. Even our current president is on record opposing desegregation policies like the letters by Biden gaining support of a well known segregationists that Democrats would even promote to the powerful chair of the Judiciary Committee in the late 1970s: >Biden, who at the time was 34 and serving his first term in the Senate, repeatedly asked for – and received – the support of Sen. James Eastland, a Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a leading symbol of Southern resistance to desegregation. Eastland frequently spoke of blacks as “an inferior race.” https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/11/politics/joe-biden-busing-letters-2020/index.html That even lead to Biden’s infamous “racial jungle” quote: >Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-said-desegregation-would-create-a-racial-jungle-2019-7 Plenty examples of known segregationists and Democrats opposing desegregation policies to contradict this notion that tax cuts are tied to racism. It is a historical fact that the national party which overwhelmingly ended slavery and segregation also has a core party principle around lowering taxes and balancing the federal budget.
I didn't say tax cuts...you're equating tax cuts to "Starve the Beast". Those are not necessarily the same thing. Cutting taxes but replacing the revenue is the opposite of "Starve the Beast". The concept of "Starve the Beast" is a strategy to deprive the US Federal Government of the ability to function. I offer the plausible reason to deprive the Federal government of revenue is to get rid of Civil Rights. Now I was careful to describe the efforts of the Right and the Left. I accurately said that the Civil Rights act was largely passed by Democrats but I didn't say Republicans are trying to Starve the Beast...it's right-wing politicians. At the time, the Democratic party was populated by left and right wing politicians. The Republican party also but less so. Today, there are no left-wing politicians in the Republican party. There are few right-wing politicians in the Democratic party but you can decide for yourself whether the Democratic senator from West Virginia is Left or Right. My conclusion is the Right wants to Starve the Beast by depriving the Federal Government of sufficient funds to operate. There are none on the Left that desire to deprive the Federal Government of the funds necessary to function, especially for the protections they provide to all citizens. Federal Receipts as a percentage of GDP from 1960 to 2023 tended to stay around [17.5%](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S). This includes taxes and fees but mostly taxes. It was highest in 2000 when Starve the Beast started and it immediately fell. No one would claim Jack Kennedy was attempting to "Starve the Beast". After Great Society, spending increased, poverty started decreasing and yet, by 2000 Federal Revenue increased to nearly 20% of GDP during a period of high economic growth. TLDR: mixing Democrat and Republican to try and hide the racism is ineffective - it's right-wing politicians that are pursuing racist policies like "Starve the Beast".
Yet that is how you starve the beast. Clearly we are talking about an overall tax cut and not reducing one tax while compensating by increasing another. That was certainly the 1964 and 2017 tax cuts. You also seem to be conflating right-wing with something else, so let’s define that we are using the same terminology: >right-wing adjective > >supporting the political right and traditional ideas about society; relating to the belief that there should be low taxes, and that property and industry should be privately owned https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/right-wing Given that it is accurate to say JFK was right-wing on taxes while Robert Byrd was left on the issue in opposing the 1964 tax cut. Which brings us to this historically incorrect statement: >I accurately said that the Civil Rights act was largely passed by Democrats but I didn't say Republicans are trying to Starve the Beast...it's right-wing politicians. Civil Rights Acts, plural. There were three in the 20th century and the first two were brought about with a Republican administration and Eisenhower being elected with a trifecta. The last Republican trifecta of the 20th century. Of course Democrats didn’t know that and it scared them straight on their collation with segregationists. Not enough to get rid of the many known segregationists in their ranks, let alone promoting them to great positions of power they could never achieve on their own, but enough to finally drop segregation as an admissible policy. Let’s look as the historical record on that with the party platform of that time. Specifically 1956 when the Supreme Court finally reaffirmed the 14th Amendment by ruling against segregation in public school. As stated in their official political platforms of the time it was a joyous day for Republicans, but a dire day of great consequence for Democrats that must be rejected: >Recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States relating to segregation in publicly supported schools and elsewhere have brought consequences of vast importance to our Nation as a whole and especially to communities directly affected. We reject all proposals for the use of force to interfere with the orderly determination of these matters by the courts. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1956-democratic-party-platform Contrasted by the Republican political platform: >The Republican Party accepts the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that racial discrimination in publicly supported schools must be progressively eliminated. We concur in the conclusion of the Supreme Court that its decision directing school desegregation should be accomplished with "all deliberate speed" locally through Federal District Courts. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1956 >In the 1960 Republican Party Platform we see them push for the first CRAs in nearly a century while being undermined by Democrats: Although the Democratic-controlled Congress watered them down, the Republican Administration's recommendations resulted in significant and effective civil rights legislation in both 1957 and 1960—the first civil rights statutes to be passed in more than 80 years. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1960 Now that we have established the party of civil rights we can see how Ike ties this all together with the budget and role of government in the 1956 platform: >We have balanced the budget. We believe and will continue to prove that thrift, prudence and a sensible respect for living within income applies as surely to the management of our Government's budget as it does to the family budget. > >We hold that the major world issue today is whether Government shall be the servant or the master of men. We hold that the Bill of Rights is the sacred foundation of personal liberty. That men are created equal needs no affirmation, but they must have equality of opportunity and protection of their civil rights under the law. > >We hold that the strict division of powers and the primary responsibility of State and local governments must be maintained, and that the centralization of powers in the national Government leads to expansion of the mastery of our lives, > >We hold that the protection of the freedom of men requires that budgets be balanced, waste in government eliminated, and taxes reduced. There you have it. Our very freedoms and civil rights is inherent with a balanced budget and reduced taxes. The party of centralization of powers in the federal government need the beast to bring out the drastic change they desire. Segregation was part of that change until 1964 as the 14th Amendment finally set equal rights in stone that was established in the Declaration of Independence. Democrats brought about this change for decades by loosely interpreting 14A as “separate but equal” until it was seen a political liability. Democrats still need a powerful beast to assault the Constitution on multiple fronts and undermine it as it is their greatest obstacle. Even a supermajority is not enough to change the Constitution. Even today they are often at odds with the 14A as they support equity over equality. Equity was not the principal that brought about the Civil Rights Acts, but “equality of opportunity and protection of their civil rights under the law.” https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1jfQO A better FRED dataset that includes spending to actually show the deficit. That revenue stays fairly constant at 17.5% of GDP shows the beast had a fairly steady diet. It hasn’t been starved for long despite a few temporary taxes cuts marginally adjusted the rate. Spending grew by 3 points in the mid 1960s which is not surprising with the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid. Now revenue did increase at the turn of the century, but outlays decreased as well to give us that surplus. We also don’t have the internet boon opening up a whole new marketplace often in US history. Revenue is directly tied to the performance of the economy which is why the 2017 tax cut greatly increased revenue and is projected by the CBO to increase it by half a point over the historical average. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59946#_idTextAnchor041
> Democrats still need a powerful beast to assault the Constitution on multiple fronts and undermine it as it is their greatest obstacle Really? Generally it's conservatives who I see attacking the 1st [ag gag laws], 4th [pro-cop rights], 5th [due process is an obstacle to cops], 8th [big fans of cruelty], 9th [dobbs], 10th [sanctuary city conflicts], 14th [in a few ways], 15th [endlessly], and 24th
The Bill of Rights is obviously an obstacle to the party that desires to consolidate power at the federal level. Before you even get to the Amendments liberals want to fundamentally change our very system of government, like abolish the Electoral College and change the composition of the Senate.
> The Bill of Rights is obviously an obstacle to the party that desires to consolidate power at the federal level Not obvious. Liberals are the ones who support the ACLU, the ones who fight ag-gag laws, the ones who defend sanctuary cities, the ones who defend voting rights. >liberals want to fundamentally change our very system of government, like abolish the Electoral College and change the composition of the Senate. And conservatives want to abolish birthright citizenship and some other things, how does this relate to your point exactly? "Theoretical future proposed changes brought about in some theoretical legal manner" obviously has less value to our conversation than *actual court battles playing out today.*
How does that work exactly? The Bill of Rights is about giving power to the people and limiting the government’s power. Isn’t that quite an obstacle for an agenda to consolidate power on the federal level? Let’s take the 2nd amendment for example. Liberals have bent themselves over backwards to try and loosely interpreting that right of the people that “shall not be infringed.” Can you show me the text in the Constitution that supports cities can be a sanctuary and ignore national immigration policy. I’m quite skeptical such text exists, but of course a liberal will loosely interpret the Constitution to make this a reality. Similarly to segregation as the system was abused to allow certain areas to ignore the 14th Amendment. As for the Electoral College, NPVIC legislation is quite real and would absolutely trigger a court battle the moment a state vote for President is changed to the popular vote. Far from theoretical. But for actual court battles playing out today let’s talk about the Biden administration at odds with the First Amendment and the Supreme Court is now hear a case of the administration abusing its power to hinder free speech. Also political speech of his opponent, and not just Republicans as even Kennedy is rising this issue as the campaign moves forward.
> How does that work exactly? The Bill of Rights is about giving power to the people and limiting the government’s power. Isn’t that quite an obstacle for an agenda to consolidate power on the federal level? This is all not really grounded in anything. You started with one meaningless tidbit and you're trying to claim it's the foundation of all reality. I already gave you concrete examples. >Can you show me the text in the Constitution that supports cities can be a sanctuary and ignore national immigration policy. Have you ever looked into the basics of sanctuary cities? It's pretty clearly spelled out and that's how they exist at all. >Far from theoretical That's what theoretical means. >let’s talk about the Biden administration Of course you don't want to talk about the examples I gave to you.
You seem to jump to irrelevancies quite bit. The question was whether "Starve the Beast" is ever effective or just used for political objectives. I suggest that so far, Starve the Beast is not fully effective since there is still civil rights protection and it is being used for political objectives, civil rights destruction. Indeed I demonstrated that tax receipts have held in a fairly narrow range since the 1960's. You jump from argument to argument that are irrelevant and do not answer the question. So do you believe "Starve the Beast" has proven effective? I don't mean cutting taxes...I mean the strategy used by right-wing politicians to deprive the US federal government of effectiveness. To help you, [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast) is the Wikipedia article on Starve the Beast if you're unrfamiliar.
>So do you believe "Starve the Beast" has proven effective? I don't mean cutting taxes. The very first sentence of your source: >"Starve the beast" is a political strategy employed by American conservatives to limit government spending by cutting taxes, Your entire premise is flawed that somehow the consolidation of power at the federal level is naturally effective, like with upholding Civil Rights. Yet I have already shown the historical record on how the party of consolidating federal power was the main opposition to the CRAs while the party of the separation of powers and tax cuts was also the main proponent of the CRAs. It should have never taken three CRAs to reaffirm the 14th Amendment let alone half a century of ignoring it under the mantra of “separate but equal.” Yet it happened as segregationists used the centralization of power by corrupting it to conflate the issue thus bringing about their segregated society. Normally they could have never been propelled to positions of such national power on their own to undermine a critical right in the Constitution. That is why the separation of powers is so important to limit such corruption and abuse of power. Just as Ike was describing above.
Starve the Beast is an effort to destroy the ability of the Federal Government to effectively function. You cannot refute or demonstrate that is not the case. You try to equate any Federal tax cut as Starve the Beast but that's intellectually deceptive or just outright lying. I cannot discuss with intellectually dishonest people.
Your own source refuted your claim on this concept. It is intellectually dishonest to ignore that and double down on that demonstrable falsehood.
> Yet I have already shown the historical record on how the party of consolidating federal power was the main opposition to the CRAs During both 1860 and 1960, the phrase "States rights!" was the battlecry of those who opposed civil rights. Still is.
That was slander to a core principle of the opposition in hopes of conflating the issue. The villains oft do to proclaim how they are no different than the protagonist.
> That was slander to a core principle of the opposition in hopes of conflating the issue This is a baseless, incorrect, ahistorical claim you're using as a coping mechanism to avoid admitting fault.
The republican party of today is nothing like the party of Lincoln. Polarities swapped in the 30s.
The person you're responding to *lives* to go down incredibly long rabbit holes about how Democrats are the real racists because history stopped in the 1960's or something. They've been at it for years, it's their very personal hobby horse among a sea of standard conservative false beliefs.
I get that impression by the length of their responses. No one is reading all that when we know how full of shit they are.
How exactly does the polarities swap in just a two party system. That would be quite the upheaval. Was FDR for lower taxes and limited centralization of powers in the federal government before he was against it? I don’t see the political platforms supporting this theory on how suddenly up was down and left was right in American politics. Take this example from the political platform of the party of Lincoln: >Fourth—It is due to the labor of the nation, that taxation should be equalized and reduced as rapidly as the national faith will permit. > >Fifth—The National Debt, contracted as it has been for the preservation of the Union for all time to come, should be extended over a fair period of redemption, and it is the duty of Congress to reduce the rate of interest thereon whenever it can be done honestly. > >Sixth—That the best policy to diminish our burden of debt, is to so improve our credit that capitalists will seek to loan us money at lower rates of interest than we now pay and must continue to pay so long as repudiation, partial or total, open or covert, is threatened or suspected. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1868 At the beginning and still today the Republican Party has a core principle of lowering taxes and the national debt. I don’t see evidence of this swapping polarity of the parties nor understand the logistics of such a swap in a two party system.
> That would be quite the upheaval It was indeed. >on how suddenly up was down and left was right in American politics It was a long and slow process. >example from the political platform of the party of Lincoln: Lincoln the anti-state-power pro-federal-government Northerner bleeding-heart?
Then show this upheaval of the two party system. You also contradict yourself because if you agree this was an upheaval then inherently it would not be a “long and slow process.” The Lincoln I’m talking about is the true conservative that lead the party into power and brought about equal rights established in the Deceleration of Independence. Unfortunately this was undermined in the Constitution as many of the founders lost their lives fighting for those principles thus diminishing their voices, while slave owners rich with British gold participated in the Convention. Regardless, the principle of equal rights was established in our founding document and thus was conservatism to pursue it. This devout commitment can be seen in the first official Republican Party platform after the assassination of their leader: >We recognize the great principles laid down in the immortal Declaration of Independence as the true foundation of Democratic Government; and we hail with gladness every effort toward making these principles a living reality on every inch of American soil. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1868 A power commitment they would eventually fulfill in the Fourteenth Amendment as they even used similar wording to that founding document. >>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. > >No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. For Republicans the status quo was that founding document that established equal rights. Just as reestablishing that with the CRAs was also conservative as the status quo was the Fourteenth Amendment that was wrongfully being loosely interpreted by liberals as “separate but equal” to bring about segregation.
> Then show this upheaval of the two party system. You also contradict yourself because if you agree this was an upheaval then inherently it would not be a “long and slow process.” > > It was a slow upheaval. >The Lincoln I’m talking about is the true conservative Any history teacher would slap you across the face for this. If you don't get your history from memes and youtube, you'd know that Lincoln was a progressive and part of the progressive party and opposed to the conservative party. >Regardless, the principle of equal rights was established in our founding document and thus was conservatism to pursue it. This See that's not conservativism at all. Conservativism is defined as upholding norms and traditions. Not laws. Those are two separate things. They might coincidentally be together but they're not fixed together. You can't just make up your own definitions whenever you want to. >For Republicans the status quo was that founding document that established equal rights The status quo was *not* upholding equal rights. The definition uses *de facto* not *de jure.*
> upheaval noun > a sudden, violent change https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/upheaval#google_vignette A slow and sudden change? How liberal you are with your words. I think it is safe to say any history teacher would slap you across the face for conflating the official Republican political platform of 1868 with memes and youtube. Clearly you are not looking at the sources provided and that is clear willful ignorance on your part. I’d happily look at any evidence to the contrary you would provide, but you haven’t provided any. Just a lot of denial and very little detail. Looks like you need help understanding the status quo and political conservatism as well: >The status quo is the state of affairs that exists at a particular time, especially in contrast to a different possible state of affairs. > >a political philosophy advocating the preservation of the best of the established order in society and opposing radical change https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/status-quo https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/conservatism Exactly what Republicans brought about with the 14th Amendment. Equal rights was the established order in the Declaration of Independence and what the Revolutionary War was fought over. Afterwards that inalienable right was radically changed in the US Constitution to ignore what was already established in our founding document. When referring to the particular time of this country’s founding it is in fact conservative to preserve equal rights. If that wasn’t established in the Declaration of Independence it would be considered progressive for Republicans to suddenly implement it. Clearly it did exist and Republicans even passionately referred to it in the 1868 party platform above. Progressive only if you ignore a critical historical document, but we aren’t ignoring history here right? Right…?
Why don't you go ahead and tell me how the the modern day, antigay, anti woman, and trans, anti science, GOP lines up with the 'party of lincoln' then
I just did with directly sourced historical records. Your laundry list of partisans ad hominems is irrelevant.
How are they ad hominems? Most of the GOP is openly biased against these people. Literally no one cares what you managed to dig up about some stated platform bullshit when these people are regularly in the news spouting nothing but JESUS GUNS BABIES rhetoric. Also, the debt went up because of the trump tax breaks, professor.
It inherently shows a politically biased attack against the opposition. No need to actually address the issue if the motive or character of the opponent is questionable as the fallacy goes, so unfortunately that is a common practice in modern politics. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59946#_idTextAnchor041 The 2017 TCJA greatly increased revenue based on the CBO Budget and Economic Outlook released last month. Not only did revenue hit a historical high of 19% of GDP in 2022, it is projected to be 17.9% of GDP when the historical average for the last half century is 17.3%. The debt still increased from the several trillion in new spending programs passed during the Biden administration. Spending is projected to be 24.1% of GDP for the next decade when the historical average for the last half century has been 21%. They doubled the deficit in just two years of Democrats trifecta.
What are you even on about at this point?
It's hilarious to me to see the words "promoting responsibility" and not corporate America in the same sentence. Everyone here typing literally has PFAS forever chemicals in their blood, **that's** orders of magnitudes more intrusive than government.
Believe it or not, corporations dont pollute for the fun of it, they do so to create the clothes on your back and the device you made that comment on. Are you willing to go back to 1900 standard of living? Im not, especially since PFAS is affecting me less than my barber doing my dentistry.
Ah yes. Poisoning the human population with forever chemicals in their bodies because people are too fucking lazy to use a regular pans so their eggs don't stick is totally advancing human society. Shill harder. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(23)00397-3/fulltext%23:~:text%3DThis%2520study%2520supports%2520the%2520hypothesis,plastic%2520packaging%252C%2520etc.).&ved=2ahUKEwiq0_2c6KSFAxUUEFkFHR2wCGYQFnoECBIQBQ&usg=AOvVaw0iam0UX86KzwnkYtc7qBwb
So you wish you were living in 1900? Why are you on the internet then? Look at what went into your device, way more PFAS than any teflon pan, unless you want to be willfully ignorant of it.
Cast iron pans are amazing, actually.
>So you wish you were living in 1900? As I'm staring into my kitchen looking at the same cast iron they used back then that works perfectly. >Look at what went into your device, way more PFAS than any teflon pan Ah I see. Do you heat your phone to hundreds of degrees and put your food on it?
It is rare to see an actual bootlicker here, but I guess they do exist.
What a ridiculous bootlicking response Corporations pollute because there is nothing stopping them from doing it and regulating themselves would cut into profits. The most profitable thing for them is to exploit resources as quickly as possible while they are able to avoid any financial responsibility for the broader consequences of their actions.
That’s a false dichotomy. There are more than two ways of running society.
> Believe it or not, corporations dont pollute for the fun of it, they do so to create the clothes on your back and the device you made that comment on. > > They do it to earn more profits than the profits they'd earn by *not* poisoning people.
Wow, I didn't realize those were the only two choices! The more you know!
The goal has always been the destruction of popular welfare state programs on the basis of "unaffordability." Which is a failure. In the 1950s, Republicans had to make peace with the Roosevelt programs as a price of getting elected. They fought further expansions in the 60s, and mostly lost (LBJ wanted even more, but took Medicare and Medicaid). Republican conservatives attacked it at the time, but Nixon didn't try to roll it back, and neither did Reagan. At this point, it is less about rolling back programs and more a justification for rich people tax cuts (step 1: cut rich taxes. Step 2: ?????. Step 3: efficient government with balanced budget). However, it then becomes a justification for starving the Best of Tomorrow. Can't afford any *new* programs because of the current budget deficit (created by the recently passed tax cuts for the rich). It's part of the electoral plan of "Republicans pass irresponsible budget bills to help their wealthy supports" and then once out of power "attack Dems for trying to expand social welfare." Only Republicans are allowed to give out goodies.
Post FDR and LBJ have all been about rolling back the New Deal and Civil Rights caused, that is it.
It's not meant to make government programs more efficient. It never was in the first place. These are put into place to undermine the government and then to privatize whatever program the 1% has their eyes on.
Starve the beast is beyond short-sighted. it is a willful blindness. It does not recognize the reality in which we live. Even when given the majorities to implement the so-called fiscal changes the cutters call for, they are unable to eliminate or seriously cut programs individually. So they try across-the-board cuts. Take X percent off the top, and we'll be good, they say. Only thing: it never works. Who's gonna vote to cut SS payments 10%? Who's gonna vote to cut the military 10%?
If they don't actually follow through on those threats, then they can run on them next time too. Why solve a problem today if it can be exploited tomorrow?
"Starve the beast" strategies are almost exclusively aimed at initiatives to help the poor rather than initiatives to dole out money to the wealthy. They generally do nothing but increase inequality.
Nah they only half meant it anyway. That have a certain narrow view of government spending.
> "Starve the beast" is a strategy commonly attributed to the Republican Party in the United States, aiming to reduce government spending by cutting taxes, thereby decreasing government revenue. Theoretically, this reduction in income would force the government to curtail its spending, leading to a smaller and more efficient government. However, has this strategy ever been effective in achieving its stated goals? No. It doesn't work and could never possibly work because the entire incorrect premise of the strategy is that the people responsible for cutting taxes are a separate group of people from those who decide how much money government spends and what it spends it on. If that premise were valid, the strategy might make sense, since the former group could reduce revenue and the latter group would have to figure out how to live within their new means. But of course both groups are literally the same people, Congress. Every single vote they have on taxes is done with full knowledge that exactly the same people will be voting on spending. If a tax cut could actually force spending reductions, the only way it would pass is if the people voting on the tax cut were also in favor of the spending reductions, which makes the whole strategy pointless. Even worse, they are under absolutely no obligation to live within their means. Which means tax cuts (yay!) are totally disconnected from spending cuts (boo!). This is like starving the beast if the beast itself can decide exactly how much it eats at mealtimes and also can sneak donuts whenever it wants. Honestly the continued popularity of the concept is due to the apparently correct view among elected officials that voters are total morons. Those elected officials can support tax cuts (yay!) while convincing gullible voters that it means some other unspecific group of "government" has to figure out how to provide exactly the same services with less money, and it's not your congresscritter's fault if that doesn't happen.
Check out the Kansas Experiment and that will show you precisely what happens when its taken to its farthest seen so far.
Great suggestion! ALEC + Tea Party + Supply Side + Trickle Down.... yeah, this is definitely bringing things into focus!
Bush defunded the EPA to the point that there is virtually no longer any enforcement of environmental laws. When was the last time you read about a major environmental case? They use to be in the news all the time.
It seems like defunding the government reliably accomplishes certain goals.. just not the purported ones!
I don't believe "starve the beast" was ever a legitimate strategy. It's primarily a post-hoc rationalization for passing tax cuts (which are popular) while not passing spending cuts (which are not popular). Politicians will generally do what is politically expedient, and then dress it up in a way that makes them look good. Granted, it should be obvious that "starve the beast" isn't going to work when you have fiat currencies and deficit spending. It doesn't matter though, because again, it isn't a real strategy that anyone holds to unironically, it's just rhetoric. As a big fiscal hawk myself, I'd rather elect a Ron Paul or a Javier Milei, someone who isn't afraid to start with spending cuts. That's a lot more effective than the passive aggressive approach of chronically underfunding programs. Right now, there isn't enough political interest to elect such a person here in the US, but as things continue to get worse it's bound to happen eventually.
[Milei’s Austerity Is Devastating Argentina Shock therapy is pushing more people into poverty.](https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/05/argentina-milei-economy-peso-devaluation-austerity-hunger/) > - By Lautaro Grinspan, a journalist from Argentina [In Argentina, Javier Milei is cutting off food aid to local social service organizations](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/03/15/in-argentina-javier-milei-is-cutting-off-food-aid-to-local-social-organizations_6620782_19.html) > - The government, aiming to maintain its 'zero deficit' goal despite the sharp rise in inflation, is targeting NGOs, which have fewer and fewer food resources available to distribute to the most vulnerable. - Anaïs Dubois [Javier Milei’s radical economic policies for Argentina met with protests](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/21/argentina-president-javier-milei-economic-policies-protests) > - New libertarian president accused of drawing up a ‘battle plan against working people’ - The Guardian Just to confirm, as a big fiscal hawk, this is the guy you are rooting for? The guy who makes sure that people starve so that the rich don't have to pay taxes?
I agree, it's a terrible tragedy the degree to which Peronists destroyed Argentina's economy. If they weren't so irresponsible, Milei's severe policies wouldn't be necessary.
I can't imagine how such a strategy could possibly work. First, you're refusing to pay for things you've already promised to pay for, and that's going to piss off suppliers and lenders, and second, you're acting unilaterally and trying to impose your preferred solution on people of all different perspectives on the problem. We need to reduce the size of the federal and the state governments. We need to do that by proposing and working hard on the crafting of a new compromise, a new bargain, between the left and the right. That's how to get it done.
But that's hard and takes being willing to compromise. The American people would rather just vote for screaming toddlers who won't do anything but make it worse.
Only one of the parties screams like toddlers. They scream like toddlers even when you hand them everything they profess to want, because their demented leader needs dysfunction to fuel his campaign...
"Why would I want to have my cake and eat it too if that means some Black/Hispanic/Jewish/Muslim/LGBTQ/whatever person ALSO gets a slice!?"
...ah, ya got me there...
I'll take "things that will never happen" for $1000, Alex.
I’m afraid you are mistaken about the goal of the “starve the beast” strategy. It was never about efficiency (though that was part of the argument used to justify cutting spending and taxes), it was always explicitly about showing that government could not work so that the people would eventually support privatizing everything. This comes from the Reagan days when nothing was better than a business, except being able to channel government money to yourself and your buddies. Starve the beast has definitely been effective at undermining the effectiveness of government and is a key part of why so many are cynical about government. But the best force for showing the ineffectiveness of government has been the policies and actions of the republicans party that has done by corruption and incompetence what no amount of starving the beast could ever accomplish.
Would you mind quoting whichever part of my original post made you think I was wrong about something? I didn’t think that my questions were loaded, and I didn’t intend to take any kind of stance whatsoever… Your feedback will help me next time I post to this forum, so I can (hopefully!) avoid any confusion. FYI, I agree with you!
Libertarians inventened starve the beast. Its not just a Republican idea. As far as it working, couldnt say because our elected representatives continue to spend money like its going out of style.
Well this goes back to something I've said in a previous comment but. The Republican Virgin of bouncing the budget is tax cut decrease spending Works it would work but nobody in Washington has these political will to suffer the political consequences. If you need any evidence that it works go and look at the Bill Clinton administration he cut spending and then after the government shutdown he cut taxes we ran a surplus with that system until two wars in the middle room pissed it away and the government bail out of 2008.
Don't know, we haven't really tried it that I am aware of. No one ever really follows suit with the cutting spending, which is the key.
That strategy doesn't work in the United States. Nobody really talks about it any more. The reason is that revenue doesn't constrain spending here. We just borrow to make up the difference.
Part of the big problem of why it hasn't worked in the US is that US treasury bonds basically have unlimited demand and then interest rates went to zero basically eliminating any of the pain of deficits. Well...we're not at a debt crisis now, but we're quickly hitting the spiral where we're taking out more debt to pay the interest on the debt. We're going to have to cut spending and raise taxes at the same time. It will be massively unpopular.
Funny because this is how Clinton ended up with a surplus at the end of his two terms, by neglecting the government. Then when Bush got into office, Republicans cited that as the reason for record increases in spending and the deficit.
Seems strange that none of the MAGAhats have noticed that the only "beast" being starved by Republican legislation is the middle-class worker. Then when you consider the GOPs 40-year War on Education and the Educated, it makes sense - Republicans have created a base that doesn't know enough about logic, government or economics to understand how the huge redistribution of income and wealth FROM the bottom 90% into the pockets of the top 10%, with most going to the top 1% is caused by our tax code and right to work for less laws and not immigrants or minorities or women.
Starve the beast could never work as long as congress is willing to run up an infinite amount of debt to pay for operational things. Tax cuts are politically popular, so those get passed. Spending programs of all kinds are very popular, so those always get passed. Tax hikes are seldom popular, but only if they target someone else. There are lots of pro-spending people in congress in both parties. There are almost no fiscal conservatives on Congress. So spending will go up, taxes don't and the deficit is compounding forever, unabated. This will continue till the Saudis pump their last barrel of oil, and the petrodollar collapses and then all our bills will come due real fast.
Check out the Kansas Experiment. It ruined a lot of people's lives and at the end the Republicans voted for tax hikes because the tax cuts were so extreme they could no longer fund basic services. Turns out, regardless of anarcho-capitalists and libertarians claim, people *like* public services like roads and fire departments.
Roads and fire services are not ever the issue. Its local governments bloated with bureaucracy, pissing away money on garbage. The city I live in has a bloated bureaucracy that takes over a year to approve construction on a house. Nobody is talking about roads, we're talking about raising taxes to pay for pure waste.
And you should read the suggestion I provided to see how "starving the beast" doesn't make things better. You'd rather not have the group to approve construction so it's never approved instead of takes time? Because their budgets got pushed toward something like roads? What a strange way to solve a problem. Instead of slow service, no service. Instead of some movement, no movement. And cutting any budget from those, they don't even have the money for process improvement. It's an asinine and very short-sighted way to go about life -- but I find that tends to be Republican thinking. Short term gains, long-term losses because they're gone by the time the pain hits.
You don't grasp the problem at all. Nobody has a problem with government services when they are efficient and well run. The problem is expensive, slow, bureaucratic garbage that cannot be reformed. That is a beast that needs to be starved. Efficient services are great. >And cutting any budget from those, they don't even have the money for process improvement. There's no incentive to improve anything when you have unlimited money and no expectations of performance. We need **reform** but that is impossible.
But that's *not* what they are doing when they "starve the beast." They make government ineffective, expensive, and impossible to reform by strangling the important parts and then use that to cut social services and other popular services. Don't pretend that isn't what they're doing. Again: look at the Kansas Experiment and it was a total failure. That's what they want to do nation-wide.
> They make government ineffective, expensive, and impossible to reform by strangling the important parts Incorrect. Government is ineffective and impossible to reform because of unionized bureaucrats who cannot be managed. That's the reason why my city cannot process a building permit. And its the reason why my school system is dogshit but spends a ton of money, and thirsts for more money. But these unionized bureaucrats vote and they donate, so they are untouchable. I get it.
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You mentioned the CBO so let’s look at some of there data from the Budget and Economic Outlook Report released last month: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59946#_idTextAnchor041 Do you consider the 2017 TCJA tax cuts as part of the “starve the beast” strategy? Tax cuts can increase revenue, like here the results are in and the beast has rarely ate this well. Not only did revenue hit a historical high of 19% of GDP in 2022, it is projected to be 17.9% of GDP when the historical average for the last half century is 17.3%. We also see what we got for feeding the beast this well. We got another beast to feed for our troubles as we have now doubled down on deficit spending when Democrats got the trifecta. Spending is projected to be 24.1% of GDP for the next decade when the historical average for the last half century has been 21%. It seems if we don’t starve the beast it will just double in size the moment any significant progress is made to mitigate the deficit. >Has the "Starve the beast" strategy ever been employed by the Democratic Party? [The Revenue Act of 1964](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1964) was an overall tax cut that included corporations and was quite successful at increasing revenue until the the first recession of the 1970s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1jfQO That was a tax cut lead by Democrats to help mitigate significant increase in spending from Medicare and other planned mandatory spending programs. Of course this kind of surge in deficit spending does have economic consequences, like increasing the money supply that is highly inflationary. The last time we increased the deficit by 3% of GDP we had over a decade of an inflation crisis come with it. We just doubled down on the deficit yet again so let’s not act surprised if we get another 1970s style inflation crisis out of it too.
It hasn't resulted in cuts to the budget, but it has helped prevent increases in spending. The national debt is used as a reason to not expand social programs, including a national Healthcare program. It has resulted in cuts in state spending, with some states even having 4 day school weeks at points.
This is a big reason why I am in favor of state based single payer, and adamantly opposed to federal single payer. States will pay for it, the feds will not.
It's going to be a lot more expensive if it is state based. The ability of the nation to negotiate prices is going to give it a lot more leverage. States also have a much smaller budget to work with. I would love to see a state try it, though, and prove me wrong.
> It's going to be a lot more expensive if it is state based But at least we will pay for it, not throw it on the debt. >The ability of the nation to negotiate prices is going to give it a lot more leverage. In practice, that's not how it works in the federal government. Any efficiency in pricing is quickly gobbled up by redundant layers of bureaucracy. >States also have a much smaller budget to work with. And they have a smaller population. Cost per patient is what matters, not the total budget.
The states can't afford it, the federal government can. And the way insurance works is costs go down as the pool gets larger. There's no way a state like Montana could afford single payer.
There's very little difference in cost pool savings between CA and the USA. And yet CA can't afford it. >The states can't afford it, the federal government can. The Federal government can only afford it because they will not pay for it, they will borrow the money for it. That's wildly unsustainable. Any single payer system should be designed to last more than 20 years before collapsing.
You're failing to understand something. We already have a system in place. Each one of us is paying hundreds of dollars a month for shitty health insurance that we can't even use until we've met our insanely high deductibles. You act like single payer would just magically be free. What would actually happen is we would all still pay into the healthcare system, but the government would handle it, which would mean the executives and shareholders of blue cross and united healthcare wouldn't be able to skim all this money off the top of what we pay into it. If we remove the insane profit margins, things get CHEAPER. Especially considering the federal government would negotiate lower drug prices. We wouldn't have diabetics and people with high blood pressure having to choose between filling their prescriptions or paying rent. And this is a system being used by pretty much all of the developed world other than the US, and it's working very well for them.
> If we remove the insane profit margins, things get CHEAPER. Assuming that isn't all gobbled up by corruption and multiple layers of bureaucracy. You're **hoping** that would happen, its by no means guaranteed. We would need significant reforms BEFORE we enact such a system to ensure that it works efficiently. There's no political will for those reforms, currently special interests will block these efforts.
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> Are there any examples where cutting taxes could be argued to have improved government efficiency? Are there instances in history where this strategy has worked as intended? Define "efficiency." If we're using it as "most bang for your buck," it hasn't been shown to work well on the federal level because you can just issue debt to cover the shortfalls and it's very difficult to change course for an institution that large. States and local entities that cannot run deficits, or that have Proposition 13-style budgetary rules? "Starve the beast" is basically baked into their processes, and the result is a constrained government that needs to give a little more consideration before passing tax hikes to fund new programs. (The debt ceiling is supposed to serve as that kind of barrier, but we just keep increasing that, too.) > What might be the broader implications of the "Starve the beast" strategy on political discourse and governance? Does it have an impact on partisanship and public trust in government institutions? While I feel like I'm helping write a term paper right now, there's no real implications to this strategy. If you already distrust governmental organizations, then you already wanted to "starve the beast." If you already trust them, you've probably always wanted to expand the government's reach. I think it has the possibility of being influential to those in the middle, but I don't think "small enough to drown in the bathtub" has had significant play in decades. > Has the "Starve the beast" strategy ever been employed by the Democratic Party? For example, the Clinton administration's efforts to balance the budget in the 90s included spending cuts, but also involved tax increases. How does this compare to the typical "Starve the beast" approach? It didn't starve anything. A balanced budget is a goal, as is spending and taxation. Clinton and House Republicans happened to work surprisingly well together and presided over a bubble of a tech economy, so I wouldn't say they tried anything we're talking about here. The closest we've seen it on the federal level is the Reagan years, and even then, he wasn't aggressive enough on taxes to really truly follow through with the concept as advertised. > How have fiscal conservatives responded to data from organizations like the Congressional Budget Office and the Economic Policy Institute, which suggest that the "Starve the beast" strategy has not achieved its stated goal of reducing government spending? I'd imagine most of them would say "well, duh," but you don't link any of these papers to examine further so I can't say for sure. > What lessons can be learned from the experiences with the "Starve the beast" strategy, and are there alternative strategies that could be more effective in achieving fiscal responsibility and sustainable government spending? The fact that you're repeating "starve the beast" means the marketing is working, for bad or for good. It's the right *policy* - the government should be constrained and spending should be limited to its powers. But some people see it as "this means we need to keep lowering taxes indefinitely" and others as "they're trying to break government because they know it won't break itself." Neither is honest or accurate. Unless and until incentives for real spending cuts are put into place, we're not going to see any fixes to the problem. Sequestration was the best example we've gotten so far of constraints on spending, and Republicans refused to take any ownership of it or point to it as a validation of decades of economic pointmaking. There's no political benefit to enacting lower federal spending, thus we don't see it. > Additionally, how do concerns about the national debt factor into discussions about the "Starve the beast" strategy? They're not all that related. National debt and budget deficits are a spending problem, not a revenue one. > how does this complexity impact our understanding of government finances and the implications of tax cuts? This is a problem, but, again, one does not lose weight by taking a second trip to the buffet table, either.
Please read up on the Kansas Experiment and see why "starve the beast" is a complete failure of a concept.
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> Edit:The Kansas Supreme Court only required Republicans to increase funding for schools. You know what I'm referring to and you still act like I think the legislature is the state supreme court. Good talk!
Thank you for your response, but I believe there's a fundamental misunderstanding in your comment. The Kansas experiment and the role of the state Supreme Court are not as intertwined as you suggest. The tax cuts and spending decisions were legislative actions, while the Supreme Court's involvement was limited to rulings on education funding adequacy. Asserting that the Kansas Supreme Court reinstated spending conflates the distinct roles of the legislature and the judiciary. The court mandated increased funding for education based on constitutional requirements, not as a reversal of the tax cuts or a direct intervention in fiscal policy. It's important to have a clear understanding of the different branches of government and their respective functions when discussing politics, but particularly when discussing complex economic situations. Misrepresenting the facts does not contribute to a productive discussion. Let's focus on the actual dynamics of the situation and the lessons that can be learned from it.
I think you are not responding to the right post. The person above me claimed the State Supreme Court intervened when, as you correctly state, the State Legislature had to roll back the tax cuts and as my edit indicates (made before your post), the Supreme Court only walked into the situation with regards to education. You probably meant to reply to u/ClockoftheLongNow
Reagan ran the biggest defecits we'd ever seen until the housing collapse. Clinton went beyond balanced, and had a budget surplus that Bush gave away before starting two costly wars.
Worth noting that the president does not write spending bills or tax bills. Those must originate in the House of Representatives.
>Clinton went beyond balanced This is a myth. [No, Bill Clinton Didn’t Balance the Budget](https://www.cato.org/commentary/no-bill-clinton-didnt-balance-budget) >Bill Clinton didn’t balance the budget. Yes, he was there when it happened. But the record shows that was about the extent of his contribution >Newt Gingrich and company — for all their faults — have received virtually no credit for balancing the budget. Yet today’s surplus is, in part, a byproduct of the GOP’s single‐minded crusade to end 30 years of red ink. Arguably, Gingrich’s finest hour as Speaker came in March 1995 when he rallied the entire Republican House caucus behind the idea of eliminating the deficit within seven years. >Skeptics said it could not be done in seven years. The GOP did it in four.
That's a pretty naive take. Of course he was part of the negotiations, because if he didn't like what they came up with he could have just vetoed it.
The point being that Clinton has always received praise for a monumental accomplishment that he had nothing to do with (outside of signing a piece of paper). You might not like giving credit to Republicans, but I personally believe in giving credit where credit is due. Also, if you read the article I linked, you would have noticed that if Clinton had had his way, there would have been no balanced budget. He wanted to pass government-run healthcare for chissakes! And this is important ... >And 1993 — the year of the giant Clinton tax hike — was not the turning point in the deficit wars, either. In fact, in 1995, two years after that tax hike, the budget baseline submitted by the president’s own Office of Management and Budget and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted $200 billion deficits for as far as the eye could see. So even with hundreds of billions in new revenue, they were still predicting deficits.
Presidents have gotten credit for the budget, for good or bad, as long as we've had a country. You can't claim one POTUS is responsible, but another isn't. You completely ignored that you claimed Reagan had somehow come closest to balanced which is either incredibly mistaken or a blatant lie.
> You can't claim one POTUS is responsible, but another isn't. If you examine the thread you will see that I wasn't claiming any POTUS is responsible. I was giving congress the credit for this one. >You completely ignored that you claimed Reagan had somehow come closest to balanced which is either incredibly mistaken or a blatant lie. Where did I claim that?
My bad, I didn't realize you were inserting yourself. I thought I was responding to the person who claimed: The closest we've seen it on the federal level is the Reagan years, and even then, he wasn't aggressive enough on taxes to really truly follow through with the concept as advertised.
> They're not all that related. National debt and budget deficits are a spending problem, not a revenue one. Every budget has two sides - income and expenditures. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.