I am quite familiar with your cavalier attitude toward numbers, delight in changing points midstream and general enthusiasm for hand-waving solutions, Gruss, but when you are talking about budgets, numbers actually do matter.
In order to produce a roadmap, one must first agree on a destination and how long it should take to reach said destination. Ryan's roadmap fails this most basic of tests because *it does not reach its stated destination*. It cannot be considered a plan because it does not purport to achieve the stated objectives. Really quite simple. So, toss Ryan's "plan" in the trash where it belongs and never speak of it again. Then you can actually start the discussion that we actually need to have. First thing to produce a roadmap: what is the destination and how long should it take to get there? It seems like we could probably come to some rough agreement on those answers. Maybe 4 trillion dollars in debt reduction by, say, 2018 or something. Then you can get into discussions of priorities: cutting defense, preserving social security, capping entitlement growth, low tax rates for the rich, whatever. And lots of plans will come out with a balance of priorities but first and foremost they must pass the basic test: do they get to the destination in roughly the time desired? If so, it can be considered a serious plan to be debated. If not, it isn't a serious plan. Cheers, Judah On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Gruss Gott <[email protected]> wrote: > > Judah McAuley <[email protected]> wrote: >> The discussion is great and I welcome it. But no matter how much you >> want to call his plan "serious" it just isn't. > > The point you - and Krugman - are missing is that the discussion > *must* begin around priorities. > > To your point, we all agree the deficit must be dealt with. But you > don't go from that immediately to a detailed plan. > > You get increasingly focused towards the details; i.e., the next step > must be a discussion about priorities. Anything that facilitates that > discussion, like Ryan's plan does, is serious. > > (I would argue that anybody who HAS a detailed plan at this point is > NOT serious.) > > In other words, yes the deficit must be reduced but the next > discussion has to be around priorities. Defense? Entitlements? > Education? Infrastructure? Enforcement? What are our priorities? > > And to Pres Obama's point, that the next discussion adults have. And > that will be a looooonnngggg discussion. And it will result in 3 or 5 > or 10 scenarios. And those scenarios will require analysis. > > And then you'll whittle down to 3 or 5 plans. And then you'll present > those to the public and then you'll get down to 2 plans. > > And then we'll vote. > > And THEN we'll get all the details. > > Don't put the cart before ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:336365 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
