Saturday, February 12, 2011

"The Great Budget Balancing Interview-Final"

Scott Adams wraps up his interview with Phil Maymin.
Here's a taste:
...Maymin: Government expenditures are not ruled by a fixed formula. You're tacitly assuming that the government is morally obligated to pay when people live too long or get too sick. But it's actually immoral to take money by force from innocent people to pay for someone else's retirement or someone else's sickness. Given your tacit assumption, then yes: government expenditures will continue to climb so long as people continue to vote for such immoral redistribution. But I don't agree with that assumption and, now that it is no longer tacit, I hope that neither do you.

Adams: We can get back to your hallucinations about my tacit assumptions later. For now I'm just trying to size the budget hole. Readers can't judge your recommended solution unless they have a sense of how big the problem is. Can we agree that balancing the budget would require cutting something like $1.5 trillion per year in the near term, while the demand for social services could double in twenty years, primarily because of an aging population, whether the government attempts to meet those needs or not?....MORE
If policy isn't your cuppa Mr. Adams also does this:

April 13, 2003