While the general trade off in economics about the present and the future deals with consumer goods and capital goods, Paul Krugman provides another example of a trade off b/w the present and the future.
Discussing the budget and the proposed cuts in his blog post, he mentions about how so many politicians (representatives) are proposing cuts that will help them and the voters today but, most probably, be a problem for the people and politicians of the future.
This posting nicely ties into the budget deficit problems as well as the idea of the 'economic man' being myopic (apparently now the political man is also myopic!). If this really is the underlying rationale behind these proposals then our generation of Americans will have even more problems to deal with in the near future.
I may be mistunderstanding, but what the conservatives are proposing affect the congress and the people in future administrations-- similar to Thursday's class discussion?
ReplyDeleteLet's cut programs that benefit US citizens, food stamps etc, and still fight abroad?
This is a tough thing to do, cut benefits, like food, domestically to help with more funding abroad. Isn't our goal to start cutting everything so we can reduce our deficit? Not just re-allocate some of the money from domestic plans to help fund foreign plans? Just seems a little misleading to me...trying to make it look like we are cutting spending by cutting back on these programs but still using that extra money for foreign policy and defense.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am very aware that our current government is fiscally unsustainable, some of these cuts seem ridiculous. EPA and the clean water initiative? Energy efficiency and Renewable resources? Science? These things may hold advances and advantages worth millions beyond their face value. The further we progress in this class, the more exasperated I get at the lack of easy answers.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Brooks, not only is this a tough thing to do but I think it is the wrong thing to do. No matter what side of the spectrum you look from, I thought the underlying problem was how to reduce our deficit? Reallocating money in general, let alone taking domestic money and spending it on foreign plans seems outrageous. We're never going to get to the bottom of this if we don't have strict policy towards cutting spending and even more so towards where we should spend.
ReplyDeleteI think we have a bad habit of passing the buck in this country. We have politicians who do just enough to get re-elected, and a self-absorbed public with a "me first" attitude. Once we accept that some hard choices have to be made, and that not everyone will benefit from them in the short run, we will be on our way to fixing our problems. Until then, we will stay on the same ride we are on now.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ashley. How can we cut so many of the programs that could potentially give our country exponential advancement and advantages in the long-term future? But, with the way our economy is today, it's difficult to argue for additional cuts in programs that are trying to bring our country back on its feet today. Fixing the budget and making everyone happy at the same time is impossible. But how can we decide what is better for our country: making short-run sacrifices today or sacrificing our future?
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