Come back, Ross! We need your charts!
The third Comment of the Day on this “Comment of the Day Friday” is an epic from Michael, expanding on the theme of my original post.
“I hate the fact that no one is talking facts, only ideology. In such an atmosphere, these selections make sense. The S&P statement said our downgrade was because we failed to tacked long-term indebtedness especially the main drivers of long-term debt: Medicare and SS, but no one really wants to deal with that. To talk facts, you really need some tables, figures, and analysis. I’m not just talking about politicians, here. Isn’t this the reason we tolerate the media? Aren’t they supposed to keep us informed of about things like this so we can then get outraged by such a stupid selection of people to ‘fix’ our problem.
“Why can’t we find a news outlet that will break things down like this?”
Revenues:
“If you look at the trend in revenues, the federal government’s revenues roughly doubled from 1995-2007. This is probably in line with inflation, and ahead of people’s pay raises. The current revenue is lower than a steady trend would expect, but it is not that much lower. So, some increase in taxes may be supported, at least until the economy improves. (See here, and here. )
Expenditures:
“What do we spend money on and what has been increasing faster than our revenues and inflation? This is what we need to focus on fixing when we cut spending.
Social Security:
“Someone needs to admit that this is a pyramid scheme. Funds collected are not set aside for those who contributed, but are redistributed to those receiving benefits now. I have paid between 27 and 30% of my income to retirement in the last 30 years. Unfortunately, only 12-14% went to MY retirement. I should not have to worry about my retirement when I have been putting in over 27% of my income. Making this system sustainable is not an impossible thing, but some hard decisions need to be made. If you can’t make the tough decisions as President or in Congress, you should do us all a favor and resign.
Medicare:
“The problem with healthcare isn’t that everyone doesn’t have insurance, but that it is increasing in cost at 5-10x that of inflation. They also should look a little deeper and find that the big cost is salaries, not ‘tests’ and ‘technology’. The British system has achieved universal healthcare by paying the average dentists $80,000/year and doctors $99,000/year (currently). Our averages are close to 4x that amount. We also have to face the fact we have a doctor shortage that requires us to import physicians. This shortage is caused by the AMA’s refusal to allow more physicians to be trained at our STATE medical schools.
“Print media is dwindling and they can’t seem to figure out what they can do to get people to read their papers. Why not just report the news instead of trying to sway the American public to accept their political/social agenda?”
Ethics Alarms 
Long ago I had an interesting if frustrating conversation with my now deceased father, who was convinced that the majority of the US budget went to the military. Shortly before that conversation, the Secretary of HHS had come to the think tank where I was working at the time, and laid out the figures, that is, for HHS and all the entitlements that fell under it (I forget the exact percentages now but remembered them at the time.) When I told my father what I had learned straight from the mouth of the Secy of HHS, his response was simply “I don’t believe it!” WHY didn’t he believe it? Because it didn’t fit his ideological view of the US and the world. Did he want the real facts? No, because they might not fit his ideological view of the US and the world. I suggested to him then that he could easily get a copy of the US budget from the Government Printing Office, for free, if he wanted to investigate on his own. He didn’t want to. Why? Because what he learned there might just upset his ideological view of the US and the world.
Now I assume that there are literally millions of citizens who feel the same way. But we SHOULD NOT EXPECT, NOR SHOULD WE ACCEPT, this kind of behavior from our supposed leadership. The “super committee” will fight over their ideologies, not facts. Michael’s comments prove a couple of crucial things: (1) that facts can be found, especially easily by anyone with a computer; (2) that those facts may be uncomfortable to learn, and that’s a big reason people don’t want to learn them; and (3) that because of the way the electronic media works, the print media could indeed perform a significant service by actually presenting facts instead of either supporting one ideology or another, or printing “pop” news that would be better left out of the hard drives of millions of minds.
Kudos to Jack and especially, to Michael.