Budgeting for the (Very) Long Run
My eyes sort of glazed over this, but in Paul Ryan’s April Fool’s Budget he has a chart showing that if you give increasing numbers of old people less-and-less money over time you can keep spending flat even as grandpa’s illness go untreated. The savings thereby accrued are, by 2080, really enormous:
Josh Marshall comments:
This is the scoring the House Republicans have provided, tracking Democratic budget policy and theirs over the next 70 years. As you can see, predicting ideological stances over as yet unborn Democratic members of Congress, the GOP scoring appears to have us on track for the government owning about 90% of the economy in the early-mid-22nd second, which if I remember is about the time period of the invention of the warp drive. So I don’t know if they’ve figured that in too.
Fortunately, this is my area of expertise. Thus, we can say conclusively that Marshall has this wrong. According to the Gene Roddenberry Budget Office, Zephram Cochrane is projected to develop warp drive in the mid-21st century and the Phoenix will become the first manned human spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light on April 5, 2063. Indeed, it’s probably no coincidence that this is about when Ryan stops doing Obama projections altogether because First Contact with the Vulcans creates a lot of hard-to-project immigration issues.
What does happen in the mid-to-late 22nd century is the rise of the New World Economy and the elimination of money from the Earth economy, presumably as part of the roughly-contemporaneous formation of the United Federation of Planets.
38 Responses to “Budgeting for the (Very) Long Run”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
April 1st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Well snarked, sir! I can add nothing.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:33 pm
The future’s so bright I gotta wear shades!
April 1st, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I’ve been pushing for Obama and the G20 to institute the New World Economy now, and just save us a lot of time. Can you, one of the most influential liberals in America, make that happen?
THAT would would be socialism.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
From what I can tell, he took the CBO report which showed how expensive Medicare and Medicaid will get if no health care reforms are done.
He then assumes no health care reforms are done and eliminated Medicare and Medicaid under the Republican budget. And extends the line for another 20-30 years or so.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:41 pm
That’s Zefram with an “f,” not a “ph.”
Area of expertise, indeed.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Matt,
Normally I don’t care about your spelling and word-choice mistakes, but it’s pretty funny that you introduced one (”mid-22nd second”?) that’s not in Josh Marshall’s post.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:47 pm
This is the same budget that decreases the deficit by assuming if you give rich people tax breaks, they will continue to voluntarily pay higher taxes?
April 1st, 2009 at 5:49 pm
So what you’re saying is that Michelle Bachman is fundamentally right (and displaying impressive prescience!).
April 1st, 2009 at 5:51 pm
And compared to a new global currency, the whole United Federation of Planets concept is going to drive a lot of people on the right edge of the political spectrum right over a cliff.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Once taxes are collected in gold-pressed latinum, it becomes really difficult to project out the savings from Republic administrations. Though the need for a strong defense will no doubt necessitate significant investments in photon torpedo technology.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I hadn’t really thought much about this aspect of the StarTrek world, but was it ever explained exactly how the New World Economy was established?
My personal guess is the advent of replicator technology (essentially nanotech machines converting waste into anything you want) eliminating scarcity. That might do it, since both material needs are more or less done away with, and the drive for accumulation becomes kind of pointless when anyone with a replicator can make as much stuff as you can.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:11 pm
You hippie peacenik types can keep hoping for your socialist utopian United Federation of Planets. I, for one, look forward to the day that the Terran Empire installs the solid core values of social darwinism, free enterprise, and galactic imperialism bringing intergalactic peace and a brighter economic future for our descendants. Mirror Universe, indeed.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:24 pm
You’ve got to admit, Clinton’s team did wonders in settling the Eugenics Wars in the ’90s.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Now it makes sense. Though I don’t see how humans traveling at the speed of light or faster won’t save us even more money. Obviously Ryan’s projections aren’t figuring those savings in.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:36 pm
keep spending flat even as grandpa’s illness go untreated. The savings thereby accrued are, by 2080, really enormous:
Plus, Soylent Green!
April 1st, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Yes, Matt, but according to First Contact WWIII occurs just a few years before encountering the Vulcans (probably around the 2050s), so I’d expect to see a huge uptick in government spending around then for the usual war-related expenses, followed by a sharp decrease after all the major American cities (including Washington) are destroyed.
And just for the record, the invention of replicators would indeed be awesome and would change the fundamentals of the human experience and global economics, but wouldn’t it be likely that it would be corporate research that develops them? And if so, I suspect that the infinite profits generated from them would lead them to spend obscene amounts of money to increase patent time limits or beefing up trade secrets protections, etc. Something tells me that something that lets you literally make money would be something the average person wouldn’t ever get to use.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:50 pm
“Once taxes are collected in gold-pressed latinum”
Gold-pressed latinum is only used by the barbaric and backward Ferengi and similar swarthy backworld types, and I don’t believe the Federation actually has any taxation system whatsoever. The Dominion, for another example, also has no apparent taxation system either.
April 1st, 2009 at 6:58 pm
“My personal guess is the advent of replicator technology (essentially nanotech machines converting waste into anything you want) eliminating scarcity.”
Though there are some things the replicator technology can’t replicate, and the absolutely central resource within the ST universe is energy. No energy, no replicator.
No suprisingly, the few times we do see fights over resources in the ST universe are nearly always around energy-related materials: dilithium crystals, etc.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I’d stop counting in 2029, when a nuclear war has wrecked most of the country, and artificially intelligent cyborgs are attempting to exterminate mankind.
(Or am I posting in the wrong on-line fanzine?)
April 1st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Weren’t the Vulcan’s Socialists? Shouldn’t the Federation have wiped them out on contact?
And how could Spock send money home in classic immigrant style if he wasn’t getting paid?
April 1st, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Well, we were talking about the GOP.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:14 pm
“And how could Spock send money home in classic immigrant style if he wasn’t getting paid?”
a. Spock isn’t an immigrant – Vulcan is one of the founding members of the Federation, and there’s even indications that the Vulcans were more central to the Federation’s founding than the humans were.
b. Spock’s dad and grand-dad were seriously huge wheels on Vulcan – his grandad was the first Vulcan ambassador to Earth, and his dad was a first-tier heavy-hitter in Vulcan politics for over 100 years (Sarek is essentially depicted as the Talleyrand or Metternich of his time).
April 1st, 2009 at 7:17 pm
No suprisingly, the few times we do see fights over resources in the ST universe are nearly always around energy-related materials: dilithium crystals, etc.
Right. I take it that what’s happened is that energy is the only really valuable resource in the Trek universe and that what’s happened is that the Federation has state ownership of the energy resources. There’s evidently some kind of barter economy inside the Federation in non-replicable goods but none of those are particularly useful in day-to-day life.
The key prop of the system is the fact that the Federation government has sufficient energy resources that in practice there’s basically no scarcity except in extraordinary circumstances like when your ship is accidentally sent to the Delta Quadrant.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Clearly we’ll need a theory of interstellar trade:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf
April 1st, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Why then, burritoboy, did Doctor McCoy treat Spock like he just climbed over a fence?
Sarek? I’d say more like Bismark.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:36 pm
@20: “Weren’t the Vulcan’s Socialists? Shouldn’t the Federation have wiped them out on contact?”
Well, if you watched the 4th Season “Enterprise” episode “In a Mirror, Darkly” you saw an awesome alternate version of first contact.
But seriously, let’s assume for a minute that FTL travel is either impossible or would take us more than 1000 years to develop (and no one else more advanced showed up here in the meantime). Is the inevitable outcome of human political evolution, barring catastrophe, a One World Government, or could we conceivably stay both fragmented and alive at the same time?
April 1st, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Spock isn’t an immigrant – Vulcan is one of the founding members of the Federation, and there’s even indications that the Vulcans were more central to the Federation’s founding than the humans were.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:29 pm
The only people who have mostly eliminated scarcity are the various First Ones, and those First Ones who don’t view as insects beneath their attention are total manipulators, like the Vorlons and the Shadows.
Oh. Wrong universe.
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:41 am
Is the inevitable outcome of human political evolution, barring catastrophe, a One World Government
I can never decide which alternative will follow the inevitable erosion of the nation-state: One World Government or corporate feudalism. I’m in my middle twenties right now, so I should be able to live long enough to see which one wins out.
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:30 am
29: What all the techno punk that predicts the collapse of the nation state is missing is an explanation of power. Yeah, global companies are pretty powerful. But until they have something to rival the US military (and said military would never let that happen), they’ll never get so powerful that they can miss with the interests of wealthy people who are invested in the power the US gov represents. If global corporations truly begin to undermine those interests, that will be the end of those corporations. You think China or Europe is going to feel any differently? Even from the corporations standpoint, why would it want to provide security for itself and others? Right now it can let legitimate governments do the police work and just make sure policies help the CEOs make more money.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:41 am
28: it’s certainly entertaining to watch the Republican party split into its two component factions: the traditional conservatives, who believe that social hierarchy and obedience are the only sound foundation for a society, and the neocons, who believe that continuous conflict and war will stimulate the evolution of stronger, more vibrant cultures.
They have, as you might say, gone beyond the rim. In fact, they’ve gone completely beyond the rim, down the pan, round the bend and into the main sewerage system.
April 2nd, 2009 at 4:55 am
I love how the Republican budget seems to assume that the Obama budget’s spending will never stop increasing into the future, as if it would be impossible to curtail spending later. This logic works… if you assume that Republicans will be unable to win another national election in the next 72 years.
Which, given the current leadership, is at least a possibility. I wonder if they see it the same way?
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:44 am
Actually, the rise of Skynet explains the sudden uptick in spending in 2029 (which is my personal favorite part of the graph).
I mean, beyond extrapolating a single-minded Democratic interest in federal spending compared to GDP, it’s awesome that they knew the rate of increase wasn’t actually that different–so they had to throw in a nightmare scenario in the Democratic 2029. The Republican 2029, however, has avoided the robotic rebellion by bankrupting everybody to the point that technology recedes.
Don’t worry, imaginary Six and Baltar: Republicans will crush the breakdancing robots!
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 am
33: Well, Skynet is going to become self aware whichever party is in power. (”Remembah, Jutchment Day is inevidable”). The Republicans plan to keep government spending under control by privatising it first.
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:11 am
“Why then, burritoboy, did Doctor McCoy treat Spock like he just climbed over a fence?”
Because McCoy is a schmuck?
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 am
I’m pretty sure the way Judgment Day is avoided in Republican 2029 involves getting rid of the natural born citizen clause.
“Vote for me if you want to live.”
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
DaveR @12:
Wrong alternate history, I’m afraid. It’s a lot easier for me to imagine John Boehner wearing animal skins and babbling “Eee plebmnista!” than it is to see him ruthlessly rising to the top of a cutthroat military/political system.
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
“There’s evidently some kind of barter economy inside the Federation in non-replicable goods but none of those are particularly useful in day-to-day life.”
There is some sort of “trade” in art objects, antiquities and things like that. But the best of those end in publically owned museums, so there’s not some sort of big-shot art collectors with the Monets or something