Comments on: Charting the Raw Shark

By: Kevin Carson

Kevin Carson — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:22:08 +0000

If the liberals ever think outside the box in the way Jesse Walker suggested (i.e., using pigovian taxation to fund a minimum income and then eliminating the regulatory and welfare state), a huge chunk of the budget will make the transition from discretionary to mandatory.

For some reason, I keep thinking of the old Comtean saw (borrowed by Marx and many other strands of nineteenth century socialism) about legislation over people being supplanted by the administration of things.

By: solarjetman

solarjetman — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:23:01 +0000

I’m not sure this distinction between mandatory and discretionary spending is all that meaningful. If Congress wanted to, couldn’t it modify the entitlement program “formulas” to mandate less spending? Or is there something written into the mandatory spending legislation that prohibits Congress from altering it later on?

Obviously, large cuts to promised SS/Medicare benefits would be massive political losers, but if that makes the spending “mandatory” the same can be said for a lot of defense spending.

By: ajay

ajay — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:40:02 +0000

Was there non-discretionary spending in pre-Civil War America at the national level?

Government pensions? Retirement pay for senior military officers and so on? I suppose that might count as defense spending, but did civil officials get pensions?

By: Jim Henley

Jim Henley — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:21:34 +0000

TGGP: I wouldn’t think so. But I suppose The Google knows.

By: Jim Henley

Jim Henley — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:20:54 +0000

A fair question! It’s an allusion to the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons graphic novel, “Watchmen,” and is a way one of the characters mispronounces “Rorschach.” So the title suggests how different the meanings of these charts can be depending on who’s looking.

By: ed

ed — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:03:28 +0000

What does the “Raw Shark” in the title refer to?

By: TGGP

TGGP — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:58:39 +0000

Was there non-discretionary spending in pre-Civil War America at the national level?

By: Avram

Avram — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:38:27 +0000

I’d like to see a pie chart of military spending that shows what portion is actually involved in real defense. Defense of us, I mean; defense of South Korea can go in a different pie slice.

By: John Jones’ Budget § Unqualified Offerings

John Jones’ Budget § Unqualified Offerings — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:27:09 +0000

[...] millenium. (See also the indispensible Fantasia Mathematica anthology edited by Clifton Fadiman.) After writing about some Perot charts on AOTP, I wonder if, by starting social security and medicare, FDR and LBJ may have set us on the road to [...]