It's not even spending. It's tax cuts and tax holes that are only available to the super wealthy, resulting in a loss of billions upon billions upon billions of tax revenue every year with no appreciable positive effect on the economy.

Edit: I mean there's lots of superfluous spending we could probably cut back on, and even more we could not so much cut back on as make more efficient so that more of it goes to where it's needed (and then we probably wouldn't need as much to achieve the same results) but none of it is going to help balance the budget as quickly as just properly taxing the rich, because most of it (defense spending included) actually does stimulate the economy as that for any government spending initiative there has to be people DOING whatever thing they are wasting money, which means more, usually near entry level, jobs. Which means a stronger economy. Which means more tax income in the long term.

So while one could balance the budget with cuts (and there are lots of cuts that can and should be made, like toward things such as the drug war or for profit prisons or off shore detention centers) it's really attacking the problem from the wrong angle.

I'd agree entirely with that logic.

Look, the problem is the United States is broke. Like I think a lot of us like to pretend the United States isn't broke because it's not affecting us personally, like it's not literally our own money in our own bank accounts, so we're like immunized from the depth and breadth of the problem.

Don't interpret my statement as some Republican Tea Party douchebaggery because ultimately I believe that raising taxes on the wealthy and cutting excessive military spending is the majority of the solution. The problem is even doing all that isn't going to cut our multi-trillion dollar deficit down. A halfway decent political leader would realize this and cut spending in other discretionary sectors.

I realize it's politically unpopular to say this, but the bottom line is, we can't continue to enjoy the degree of lavish federal spending we've taken for granted all these years. The bubble's going to burst. And logically speaking, if I seriously advocate that even despite our huge debt the United States should be spending more to regulate greenhouse gases or assist the poor through welfare programs, I have to accept the reality that cuts need to be made somewhere, and cuts to military programs or other programs "we wouldn't miss" alone isn't enough.

It's nice to live in a fantasy world where we could spend all kinds of money we don't have to support every pet project we'd love to see, but that's not the world we can afford to live in. I wouldn't cut funding for the arts in its entirety...I'm not saying I'd cut funding for the Smithsonian or NPR. But I certainly don't see the logic in essentially having taxpayers pay money to videogame developers to develop "Indie games." I love Braid and ICO and The Oregon Trail as much as the next gamer, but my personal preferences as a "gamer" shouldn't subvert national policy, and frankly great educational games will still be made even without federal grant money. And that same logic applies to other forms of art, such as music or movies. I love a great indie film or a documentary, but you can't possibly argue that federal money should be dumped in there when we're in this much debt.

(The problem with the Tea Partiers and the Republican party is that they'll harp on cutting too much discretionary spending and then refuse to cut the military budget or raise taxes on the wealthy. And then they'll attempt to cut spending we should view as mandatory, such as funding for the Environmental Protection Agency or to Planned Parenthood. But that doesn't change the fact that some of the discretionary programs they'd like to see cut actually should be cut, given the shithole of debt we're in right now.)

EDIT:
This is a deliberately overbroad interpretation of my argument and you know it. Nowhere did I mention military spending and I sure as hell support stringent cuts into military programs.
Furthermore, I never suggested that America's debt problems would be solved simply by cutting funding to videogames. That's facetious logic. It almost sounds like you're just trying to deliberately equate me to the Tea Party loons. My point is we're going to have to cut extensive amounts of spending in many, many sectors, and this program is merely an example of something that should be cut.

Cutting this alone certainly is insufficient, but cutting it and a multitude of other discretionary programs, most notably in our military budget, as well as raising taxes for the wealthy is all part of the short-term solution.

Once we balance the budget -- while spending considerably more than we currently are to combat Global Warming and poverty -- that would be an appropriate time to start discussing funding for discretionary programs again.

Hell no.
The US isn't broke.

It's got billions of potential tax revenue, like Krylo said. Did you know the budget cuts can be avoided if some of the biggest companies (oil, coal and the like) paid their taxes?

Like, there'd be money to spare to put into the national debt.

EDIT: Here, look at this:
http://understory.ran.org/wp-content..._2533x1380.jpg

Well, I wasn't actually saying that, though maybe I wasn't clear enough.

What I meant was: Those 62 billion can be used to cancel out the 32 billion cuts.
The surplus can go to the national debt, though it'll be only a pinprick compared to what's needed.
After that, you can do a reassessment of what, exactly, needs cutting. (which is a cycle, really, but those 62 billion, annually, will help a great deal.)

People talk about cutting the military spending so that they can give more grants and things.
But the US ilitary is simply a giant performing art piece.

Yeah but that's kind of exactly my point.
I wasn't trying to say "Look, let's cut funding for the arts instead of raising taxes on the wealthy or taxing corporations or cutting funding for the latest military drone." The Republican Party is essentially saying that, but they're douches.

I'm saying that if you're really a Democrat who's really concerned about the threat of global warming or preventing poverty or providing universal healthcare, you can't simultaneously advocate increased spending into "mandatory" regulations and then also say "Let's fund all these other discretionary programs, including these lovely grants for video games" when we're in that much debt. Simply saying "we'll tax the wealthy and corporations" to justify excess spending is a ludicrous and unrealistic argument because as noted in the above chart the entire energy industry doesn't make sufficient revenue to cover the national debt. Again, I think part of the problem there is that a lot of people don't quite fully appreciate how massive a number "14 trillion dollars" is.

A decent Democratic politician is going to raise taxes on the wealthy, slash military spending, increase GHG regulations, fund renewable energy resource development, fund universal healthcare and fund welfare programs. But that same politician is going to have to cut more than just programs that are politically "unpopular" with liberals in order to ensure fiscal responsibility. If Democrats are unwilling to do so, they merely play into Republicans' hands, as Republicans can then dismiss them under the stereotype of the idealist who simply spends too much and who has no realistic conceptualization of what government funding can and cannot do.

Now, I suppose you could argue that Democrats shouldn't agree to reduce spending into discretionary programs unless the Republicans agree to cut military spending and raise taxes, and you'd be technically right. Unfortunately, that kind of political deadlock is only going to prolong and exacerbate the national debt. The Republicans deserve the blame, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that we're wading into a very deep pile of shit.

I just love how the tags include, terrible, bias, and unbalanced

but that whole interview was stupid. It amounted to
"video games are art"
"no they aren't"

neither side really said anything

Hey Snake, how about the top 10% of wealthiest people? They pay about 70% of the taxes and hold about 90-95% of the total wealth.

Now, with our progressive tax system they should be paying about three times as much as the bottom bracket and around 1.5x of the next couple, of their income.

What this means is that they should be paying about 30% more money than they currently are. This would be roughly a 21% increase in federal tax revenue over all.

Current tax revenue, just on income taxes, is 2 trillion, total revenue is about 5.5 trillion.

That's another four hundred billion if we JUST fix their income tax rates. About one trillion if we fix all their taxes.


Now, what would happen if we were to say... add another tax bracket at about oh, 1 million and above that goes to fifty percent.

That's another roughly 19% total tax revenue. Doubling those numbers. That's 2 trillion in extra tax revenue.

Now let's say that we were to put government money toward reducing the unemployment rate instead of making cuts. Let's assume we can get people jobs that pay around 20-40k. There's are 307 million people in the US and an 8.7% unemployment rate. Assuming we can get them jobs that pay around 30k per year, enough to reasonably raise a family, every 1 percent we drop that is 3,070,000 people with jobs, each one paying 4.5k in tax revenue (15% of 30,000). JUST income tax, not counting property taxes or anything else.

That's 13.8 billion in tax revenue. Just for a one percent drop in unemployment.

Let's add the 62 billion increase from Melfice's thing.

Now let's drop the Drug war. That's a 16 billion dollar decrease in spending.


Now, let's add all that up, without touching any programs that anyone actually wants or needs:

YEARLY INCOME INCREASE: 2.21 trillion.

YEARLY BUDGET DECREASE: 16 Billion.

YEARLY DEFICIT: 1.5 trillion.

AMOUNT IN THE BLACK FOR THIS YEAR: 726 billion.

Number of years to pay off national debt: 20.

HOWEVER it is actually less than that, because I didn't calculate things like tax revenue increases over those twenty years, but that involves more knowledge of economics than I have.

Point is you're forgetting that it's not 14 trillion every year. It's 14 trillion over multiple years, and we don't have to cut or increase by 14 trillion to fix it.

Edit: FURTHER it is worth noting that I increased the Federal Tax Revenue by nearly 50%. Even if you CUT ALL SPENDING FOREVER you'd still take about 3 years to pay off the debt. More because the economy would crash like a motherfucker. Also worth noting is the actual tax revenue increase would be considerably higher than that with the property and sales taxes coming in from those people who got jobs, and we'd ideally decrease the unemployment rate by 4-6%.

You misinterpret. Your argument suggested that giving money to game developers through the NEA is something that shouldn't be done because that money could be better spent elsewhere. I pointed out that this is a type of argument that I think is flawed, especially in this case. Nothing more nothing less. Not my intention to imply you said anything else.

e: Also what Krylo said pretty well up there. That there are a lot of other places/ways to gain money. The defense spending was just something I pulled out of my head without much thought, it was only meant to be an example.