Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

You're using all-caps on BILLIONS when we're talking about problems numbering in the TRILLIONS of dollars.

This is EXACTLY what I was talking about when I said:

Once you reach "A LOT", nobody really seems to notice how big that actual "lot" is.  Ie, they'll argue like crazy over saving $5k on a $50k purchase but when you are asking for $5M, nobody asks any questions. 

This is really stupid because saving 10% on a purchase of $50K is only $5k, big deal but saving 10% on a a $5M purchase is HALF-A-FREAKING-MILLION DOLLARS. 

Basically any cut in the Federal Budget sounds like a lot of money:

• We spend $1.3 Trillion on SS so a 1% cut is $13 Billion.  
• We spend $917 Billion on Nondefense Discretionary so a 1% cut is $9 Billion.  
• We spend $839 Billion on Medicare so a 1% cut is $8 Billion.  
• We spend $805 Billion on Defense so a 1% cut is $8 Billion.  
• We spend $659 Billion on Interest so a 1% cut is $7 Billion.  
• We spend $616 Billion on Medicare so a 1% cut is $6 Billion.  
• We spend $502 Billion on "Other Mandatory" so a 1% cut is $5 Billion.  
• We spend $448 Billion on Income Security Programs so a 1% cut is $4 Billion.  

All of those SOUND like ENORMOUS cuts because to any of us, even the $4 Billion that we would save by cutting Income Security Programs by a mere 1% is a HUMONGOUS amount of money.  I think that is even more than @Cincydawg and @847badgerfan have!  

The thing is that even if we doubled all of those cuts and made them all (we can't) it would only add up to ~$122 Billion.  The deficit last year was 14 TIMES that amount and the total outstanding debt is 215 TIMES that amount.  On the scale of the Federal Budget, a Billion Dollars is less than a rounding error.  

Yeah, and I constantly see people saying that we need to cut down on "waste, fraud, and abuse."

Great. So when we've cut out 0.1% of the federal budget, what are you going to do to actually make a difference?

Eh, I think that "fraud, waste, and abuse" is material and a lot more than 0.1% but cutting it also requires MORE not less federal employees and there is a major diminishing returns issue.  At some point it becomes more expensive to root out the fraud than it is to just pay the fraudulent claims.  

Per BLS, 13% of Americans "have a disability".  It is highest among the elderly:

• 46% of those over 75 and
• 24% of those 65-74

The numbers for younger cohorts are:

• 8% of those 18-34
• 12% of those 35-64.  

My wife used to work with addicts.  Nearly all of them were on "disability".  They referred to it as their "crazy checks".  Usually the disability WAS their addiction.  I HATE the fact that I and a lot of other workers have to pass a drug test to work but we literally pay for people to sit around and get high.  


I'm libertarian enough to not really care if you are independently wealthy and want to get high or if you can function in some occupation and get high at home on your own dime but I just recoil at paying people to get high while drug testing employees.  

If you look at disabilities over the years, they are WAY up and to me that HAS to be fraud or at least things that I would consider to be fraud.  If you were a ditch digger in 1965 and you threw out your back, you couldn't work.  Today you can still drive the skid steer so disabilities SHOULD be falling but they aren't.  

I do think that there is a LOT of fraud in the SS outlays but I obviously have no idea how much.  

3% is material. On $6.1T that's $183B. That's actually, ya know, a LOT of money.

It's not enough to solve the problem, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea. I mean, do we really think we can't protect America with $600B/year rather than $800B per year. $600B will still be double China, and six times higher than Russia.

As in your first quoted portion, it's not that I'm arguing against the idea of reducing federal employment and cutting worthless departments. I'm in favor of that. I'm just saying that to actually make a difference, you have to think bigger. The proposed Department of Education for 2025 is $82B. Great. Mark it zero, Dude. So now you've reduced the deficit from $1.7T to $1.618T. That's good, but it ain't enough.

My defense spending would be the 2% of GDP that we "require" of our NATO allies.  At $805 Billion it is 3% of GDP so I would advocate to cut it by 1/3 to about $500 Billion.  That would save around $300 Billion and yeah, that isn't nothing.  It IS a lot of money but still it is ~5% of the Budget and would only cut the deficit from $1.7 to $1.4 Trillion.  

At the end of the day, you can't really move this needle without substantial cuts to SS, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Those are political third rails so here we are.  

I saw a poll, looking for it, where the gap between "how are you financially compared to x years ago" vs. "how is the American economy doing vs. x years ago" is hilariously different.

I think like almost every hot button issue, people think everything is always bad, because the news tells them it is.  Even though their personal lives generally consistently get better, no matter who is in power

The self vs the masses.  Everyone's an exception.  LOL

Or maybe the media sells fear & chaos. Even when their own lives are generally fine.

And who are they going to believe? The media, or their lyin' eyes?

Or maybe the media sells fear & chaos. Even when their own lives are generally fine.

And who are they going to believe? The media, or their lyin' eyes?

It's especially sad that we all pretty much know that talking heads and social media websites actively take advantage of our tendencies and cognitions to exploit and manipulate us.  But we still watch.  We still click.  

In an individual, you can open their eyes and they can see.
In the masses, you can open our eyes, and we're still blind.

I don't. When I see an obvious clickbait headline, I avoid it out of principle. When I see a news story that I think is overly dramatized, or slanted, or designed to attack my confirmation bias, I try to drill down as close as I can to the original sources to figure out what's going on and make up my own mind.

I realize I'll probably sound off to quote Ayn Rand here, but one of her axioms is really important: "Allow nothing to pass the verdict of your own mind." Go into the world assuming everyone's trying to manipulate you, and that you have to wear and maintain mental armor against it.

I do realize that's anecdotal, and I'm the exception.

The mainstream media is everything that doesn't regurgitate what we already believe

I saw a poll, looking for it, where the gap between "how are you financially compared to x years ago" vs. "how is the American economy doing vs. x years ago" is hilariously different.

I think like almost every hot button issue, people think everything is always bad, because the news tells them it is.  Even though their personal lives generally consistently get better, no matter who is in power

I personally have done very well financially since 2020, mostly out of luck.  I don't credit or blame Biden for that.  I try and think about how the country is doing, and it seems pretty clear the middle and lower middle are struggling and don't like it.  Inflation was a shock.  "We" got used to 2% inflation for decades, and when it jumps to 9%, OMG.  And wages struggled to keep up of course.  So folks had to cut back, and use credit cards, etc.  The cutting back part seems to be happening NOW.  

This is a consumer driven economy and if cutting back is real and wide spread ....