Follow up: is it realistically achievable ever again, and should it even be a goal to be concerned with?
In: Economics
The government is not like a household. The US government can quite literally never run out of money. The people working at the fedral reserve have stated as such. “balancing the budget” simply isn’t how money actually works on a governmental level in a country that produces its own fiat currency. The national debt is simply a difference between how much the government spends and how much it money it puts into the economy. If the government wants to make something happen, they will call up the fed who will credit the right account and the thing is done, which is as simple as pressing a few buttons on a computer. Politicians talk about balancing the budget because either they know how it actually works and are duping their base, or they genuinely don’t understand how this works. Look into modern monitary theory for more information.
Easily. Expend less money than you take in in taxes.
1. Cut wasted expenditure. (Continue funding the military and other large expenditures but audit and review them to make sure money isn’t being wasted or “lost”)
2. Invest in long term investments that pay for themselves and increase wealth over time. (Infrastructure for example)
3. Tax wealthy people and big business more and don’t give them tax breaks. (Wealthy people avoid taxes, and when taxed should be taxed at a higher rate as they are already benefiting the most from the system the taxes pay for.)
You can’t have a global empire, a welfare state, and a balanced budget.
Not unless you plunder and extort other countries for resources, but that only works for so long.
Per person inflation adjusted federal revenue has gone up 3x over the last 50 years. Sadly, federal spending measured the same way had gone up 4x. So even with increased tax collection, the federal government is increasing spending even more.
So to balance the budget, you have to keep spending flat (no more increases), or if you want to balance it faster (less than 10 years), cut spending back to the still very high levels of 15-20 years ago.
But unlike non-governments, voters don’t hold people in Congress accountable for what they spend money on and they don’t like to make tough decisions like what not to spend money on, so they just spend more and more over time, especially when they can use an emergency as an excuse to the voters.
The most viable political solution to that is a balanced budget constitutional amendment passed by a super-majority of state legislatures, because Congress doesn’t have the incentive structure to hold themselves to a balanced budget.
The second most viable is to elect libertarian-leaning Republicans to Congress and a Democratic President, because then Congress won’t pass all the excessive spending the President proposes, but that’s only a short-term solution, until the voters screw it up during the following election.
Honestly? I think if we look to Washington DC for this, we will be shit out of luck. Politicians on both sides are in the pocket of so many lobbyists, and they are addicted to spending our money to curry favor with whichever city, state, company, or special interest that can help their next election. This is 100% bipartisan: Democrats spend like drunken sailors on 48 hours shore leave, and so do the Republicans in exactly the same manner.
There’s only one way out, even if it takes decades to get this to work: we need 34 states to call a Convention of States for proposing Amendments to the Constitution, and we need 38 states to ratify them. This process is the final emergency brake on the greed and corruption of DC, placed there by the Founders for just this emergency.
Regardless of your political affiliation, I would humbly ask you to have a look at [Convention of States](https://conventionofstates.com/) to understand how this could work. There’s always been a concern about a “runaway convention” but this process would still need 3/4ths of the States to ratify, so this can prevent any craziness. The CoS folks also want to limit the discussions to proposed Amendment that would “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, impose fiscal restraints, and place term limits on federal officials.” Think about how this would help balance the budget? (1) Clarify where the federal government can spend our money, (2) this topic directly, and (3) drain the swamp.
Anyone got any better ideas?
A balanced budget can be achieved through a combination of controlled spending and increased revenue, but it’s complex given the current economic priorities and political dynamics.
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