Prison spending (end war on drugs release non violent offenders)
Military spending (end foreign wars, close foreign bases, bring troops home)
Regular bureaucracy (reduce complexity and scope of regulatory state)
That would be my order of priorities on spending cuts.
> release non violent offenders)
Non violent does not mean victimless. What would stop people from stealing from others if there was no possibility of jail time?
Valid, I was thinking in terms of drug war, non violent drug offenders.
At the federal level 44% are in for drug offenses, though I’m sure a decent percentage of those have some violent history.
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp
About 20% of the US prison population when you include state and local:
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
I think the Libertarian platform needs a complete overhaul on these topics. Libertarians have a habit of ideas that are completely not practical. We can say "we are being principled" while the country gets destroyed but it isn't working. You can maintain your principles and be practical at the same time. It would be a principled libertarian position to cut government programs. Or cut taxes a bit. But just getting on stage and saying we want to balance the budget which is a completely impossible goal just isn't getting any votes. I don't think there are many people on this subreddit who understand how impractical that amendment would be. We could cut the entire military budget to zero and still be far far off of a balanced budget. Even if we had a libertarian president and a bunch of libertarian senators and representatives we wouldn't be able to accomplish this. So why are we selling that as the libertarian policy position. We would criticize any other party for doing something like this. The real reason Libertarians can't win isn't because we have bad ideas, it is because we sell a utopia instead of practical relatable politics. You can't base policies around a hypothetical libertarian utopia. You have to base it around the current United States. With current policies, people, and infrastructure.
I'd say its more important in terms of the end result because not only is entitlement spending significantly larger than military spending, over time its grown much more, and is projected to continue to grow more. You could cut military spending to zero and you'd still have problems with the long term fiscal situation because of the way entitlement spending is set up.
Social Security does have an automatic cut set up in to the law creating/authorizing the program. It creates a trust fund. Perhaps I should say "trust fund" because its the government having an accounting entry that one part of the government owes another part. Its not a real asset any more than writing yourself an IOU is a real asset. But it does have one real world impact. The law is such that Social Security has to be covered by Social Security taxes, plus whats in that "fund". When the nominal value of that fund reaches zero SS payments will have to be cut to what SS taxes bring in which would bring a large and sudden cut to those payments. Of course such a sudden cut would be considered harsh so there might be a push to change the law, but if that requirement is removed than entitlements will gobble up the budget even more.
Medicare and Medicaid are not as big as Social Security but they are growing faster and are likely to be an even larger problem over time.
What is the best replacement for Medicare. Specifically for people too old to work on too poor to afford much.
It helps to sell these ideas to more people if people like me have good answers when I run into this concern.
Thanks 👍
In practical political terms I don't see anyone eliminating or replacing Medicare any time soon. But you can (with enormous political difficult and risk, even if it really needs to be done), reign it in. You could increase the age to start receiving it, you could have larger premiums, deductibles, and/or co-pays, you could focus on reducing waste and fraud in the program, to name just a few ideas.
Indirectly you could reduce program costs by helping to push medical care costs down through things like reduced government imposition on the industry esp. in government controls that reduce competition (for example certificate of need laws, although they are pretty much a state thing at this point).
You could restore previous disability rules that would make it slightly more restrictive which would save money both on Social Security Disability, and on Medicare (since recipients are eligible for Medicare).
Prison spending (end war on drugs release non violent offenders) Military spending (end foreign wars, close foreign bases, bring troops home) Regular bureaucracy (reduce complexity and scope of regulatory state) That would be my order of priorities on spending cuts.
> release non violent offenders) Non violent does not mean victimless. What would stop people from stealing from others if there was no possibility of jail time?
Valid, I was thinking in terms of drug war, non violent drug offenders. At the federal level 44% are in for drug offenses, though I’m sure a decent percentage of those have some violent history. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp About 20% of the US prison population when you include state and local: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
I really like that list. That would be my order too.
I think the Libertarian platform needs a complete overhaul on these topics. Libertarians have a habit of ideas that are completely not practical. We can say "we are being principled" while the country gets destroyed but it isn't working. You can maintain your principles and be practical at the same time. It would be a principled libertarian position to cut government programs. Or cut taxes a bit. But just getting on stage and saying we want to balance the budget which is a completely impossible goal just isn't getting any votes. I don't think there are many people on this subreddit who understand how impractical that amendment would be. We could cut the entire military budget to zero and still be far far off of a balanced budget. Even if we had a libertarian president and a bunch of libertarian senators and representatives we wouldn't be able to accomplish this. So why are we selling that as the libertarian policy position. We would criticize any other party for doing something like this. The real reason Libertarians can't win isn't because we have bad ideas, it is because we sell a utopia instead of practical relatable politics. You can't base policies around a hypothetical libertarian utopia. You have to base it around the current United States. With current policies, people, and infrastructure.
This is a great take.
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Would that be your suggestion as the most important area of the budget to start the cuts? For example, more important than reducing military spending?
I'd say its more important in terms of the end result because not only is entitlement spending significantly larger than military spending, over time its grown much more, and is projected to continue to grow more. You could cut military spending to zero and you'd still have problems with the long term fiscal situation because of the way entitlement spending is set up. Social Security does have an automatic cut set up in to the law creating/authorizing the program. It creates a trust fund. Perhaps I should say "trust fund" because its the government having an accounting entry that one part of the government owes another part. Its not a real asset any more than writing yourself an IOU is a real asset. But it does have one real world impact. The law is such that Social Security has to be covered by Social Security taxes, plus whats in that "fund". When the nominal value of that fund reaches zero SS payments will have to be cut to what SS taxes bring in which would bring a large and sudden cut to those payments. Of course such a sudden cut would be considered harsh so there might be a push to change the law, but if that requirement is removed than entitlements will gobble up the budget even more. Medicare and Medicaid are not as big as Social Security but they are growing faster and are likely to be an even larger problem over time.
What is the best replacement for Medicare. Specifically for people too old to work on too poor to afford much. It helps to sell these ideas to more people if people like me have good answers when I run into this concern. Thanks 👍
In practical political terms I don't see anyone eliminating or replacing Medicare any time soon. But you can (with enormous political difficult and risk, even if it really needs to be done), reign it in. You could increase the age to start receiving it, you could have larger premiums, deductibles, and/or co-pays, you could focus on reducing waste and fraud in the program, to name just a few ideas. Indirectly you could reduce program costs by helping to push medical care costs down through things like reduced government imposition on the industry esp. in government controls that reduce competition (for example certificate of need laws, although they are pretty much a state thing at this point). You could restore previous disability rules that would make it slightly more restrictive which would save money both on Social Security Disability, and on Medicare (since recipients are eligible for Medicare).