> Are there other things to change if you care about the planet? Sure, but that's not the point and doing only one of them isn't going to make a dent on the upcoming climate catastrophes.

It's really interesting to me that this argument comes up often in environmental issues but is treated like the plague in other areas.

There was a thread a few days ago about the potential defunding of federal weather reporting services. I raised this same basic point, that we must do something about our deficit and even small cuts will help relative to doing nothing.

That landed like a lead balloon, the pain caused by any spending cuts just aren't acceptable to most people, unlike the pains caused by any regulations intended to help the environment.

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PretzelPirate 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Being able to use natural gas isn't a valuable public good.

I used to live in an area with regular tornadoes, having public weather data is life saving. People shouldn't have to die from tornadoes because they're poor.

	▲	_heimdall 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I currently live in an area with regular tornadoes. There's a huge gap between a federally subsidized weather prediction program and making sure people in your community can be alerted. Most even small towns in my area, the kind with one stop light at best, have community storm shelters. Granted those ultimately are partly subsidized by the federal government, but that is still different than a federal agency program. To that end, if the concern is tornado safety why doesn't the government give communities or individuals storm shelters for free rather than partially subsidizing them for those who are at least well enough off to throw a few thousand at a small unit?

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justinrubek 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you provide any evidence or reasoning that cutting the weather services would help move the needle on our deficit? Are you sure that not having them won't cause an increase instead, for example if the lack of data causes destruction or worse crop yields? Are the groups advocating for doing this taking steps to reduce the deficit elsewhere, or are they increasing it instead? Do we actually need to address the deficit?

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_heimdall a day ago | parent [-]

Cutting spending to any existing program will decrease the deficit relative to where it would be without cutting that spending. I'm not sure what evidence you'd really need there, say the budget is currently $150m and you reduce it to $0 - the deficit decreases by $150m. Given that the government doesn't use a zero-based budget, for better or worse, that decrease extends into all future years as the default otherwise is for that same $150m to be spent every year.

We absolutely do need to address the deficit as well as our debt. Expenses just to service the debt are a large chunk of our annual budget now. Do you know of any example of a country that ran up a debt to GDP (or similar) ratio this high and didn't have meaningful economic issues? Similarly, do you know of any country that debased its own currency through aggressive money printing and didn't end up collapsing, hyper-inflating, or both?

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seanmcdirmid a day ago | parent [-]

> say the budget is currently $150m and you reduce it to $0 - the deficit decreases by $150m.

Interest accrued on debt must be added to the deficit as well, unless you are including that in the budget? I'm not sure how defaulting on debt payments would play out though.

The Republicans went nuts when Bill Clinton started reducing debt with a surplus. They thought debt reduction was a really really bad thing. American is actually pretty average in debt/gdp ratio for developed countries, however. Nowhere near as crazy as Japan.

	▲	_heimdall 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Interest accrued on debt must be added to the deficit as well, unless you are including that in the budget? I'm not quite sure what you mean here. I'm talking only about reducing the deficit, any debt already owed would still be there and interest on it would still be owed. Cutting spending to reduce deficit would just slow down how quickly the debt grows. > American is actually pretty average in debt/gdp ratio for developed countries, however. Nowhere near as crazy as Japan. Oh sure, though in my opinion that's a sign of how many countries are in similar debt trouble rather than it being okay. The US debt to GDP is currently around 124%. Until very recently it was broadly agreed in economics that over 100% was a huge risk and over 120% was effectively a point of no return before you follow in Japan's footsteps. Those warning sign levels only got moved once the US passed them. Maybe they're right and it isn't actually a problem, but I can say those original levels came with specific historical examples of countries that failed after those levels and today's understanding of what ratios are okay seem to come with vague explanations and hand waving.

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myvoiceismypass 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

When the cuts are paired with other things that explode the deficit, it seems pretty meaningless.

	▲	_heimdall 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		With that we totally agree. I take huge issue with any increase in federal spending, and didn't vote for this administration in case that matters here. I wouldn't throw out funding cuts just because we are still spending elsewhere though, that seems like a move that just gets us closer to the edge faster.