Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

(04-20-2017, 09:57 PM)John J. Xenakis responding to Cynic Hero Wrote: > First, the graph that I posted is from the St. Louis Fed, not
> something that I made up. This is in contrast to the fake facts
> that you make up all the time in your weird rants.

> Second, the graph that I posted shows a surplus from 1998 to 2001.
> Apparently you're unable to read a graph. If you knew how to read
> a graph, then you would know that not only did I not deny that
> there was a surplus, but in fact the graph I posted clearly
> depicts a surplus.

> Third, what's even more confusing to you is that I wasn't talking
> about the size of the deficit. I was talking the change in the
> size of the deficit. Specifically, I was showing you that the
> deficit started surging in the year 2000. There was still a
> surplus in 2000, but the size of that surplus was plummetting
> (which means the same thing as saying that the size of the deficit
> was surging).

> So do you understand that concept? There was a surplus in 2000,
> but it started FALLING in 2000, because of the Nasdaq crash and
> the recession. The Iraq war had nothing to do with it.

> Finally, once again, if you look at the blue line on that graph,
> which shows government outlays, you'll see that it didn't bulge in
> 2003. The reason for that is that the Bush administration did not
> incur additional expenses for the Iraq war, which would have
> implied something like a draft. Instead, they reassigned existing
> resources on other projects to the Iraq war, thus keeping costs
> level.

(04-21-2017, 11:05 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: > Generally correct. Some of the additional expenses for the Iraq
> War, unlike Afghanistan, required a supplementary appropriation,
> so there was a small increase in spending - small by federal
> budget standards, anyway - and if you look carefully, there is an
> appropriately sized uptick in 2003. However, it's tiny compared
> to the size of the revenue plunge starting in 2000, supporting
> your underlying point that it was the business cycle that drove
> the surplus or deficit.

Thanks for the information.

There's one other problem with that graph. If the surplus is really
positive in 2000, as the green line shows, then the red line should be
above the blue line in the years 2000.

The reason that it isn't is because the federal government borrows
from the Social Security Trust Fund and other trust funds, and counts
those borrowings as income, which is total crap, but what else do we
expect from the federal government?

I'd like to add a line to that graph that depicts the amount borrowed
from trust funds, so that the green line will truly be a value
computed from all three of the other lines. I can't find this on the
St. Louis Fed site. Do you have any insight into this problem?

Incidentally, here's are links to a couple of pages that explain some
of this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...03291.html

http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16



https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/gr..._id=205626