In which John explains how the United States arrived at Sequestration, while also describing what exactly the Sequester is. Along the way, he explores deficits and debts and other matters of governmental budgets. It's bananas.
Understanding the American debt and deficit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugDU2qNcyg
CGP Grey's video about the debt ceiling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIbkoop4AYE
(Gentle reminder: Educational and informational videos are allowed to be longer than four minutes, so no punishment for me by extensive precedent.)
Understand the Sequester (Spoiler: It’s Bananas.)
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for ‘splainin’, John. Well done!
And to make the sequester even MORE confusing, due to base-line budgeting, after the “cuts” we will actually be spending more than we did before.
Thanks for that explanation:D
I’m dutch and didn’t really know what that sequester-thing was all about.. but now I do:D
Rachel Maddow should be proud of you:D
and also: did you sequester on all kinds of breathing in that talk?.. like comma’s and stuff?
Awesome video. Really enjoyed it. Moving between cuts makes you even more jittery- which isn’t a bad thing. Adds to the exasperation. Thanks for taking the time to talk to all of us.
Your numbers are off on the budget. So-called “Defense” spending not only exceeds, but dwarfs all social spending combined. Social Security pays for itself and has always been completely solvent. Reagan robbed Social Security so any Social Security spending now is to pay for that.
Defense spending is hidden because the American public would be outraged if they knew the government spends so much money empire building.
Here’s how the spending is hidden. War spending? That’s not part of military spending. that doesn’t count. Nor are the thousands of highly paid mercenaries….oops Contractors we’ve hired in the middle-east. Nuclear weapons, surely that has to be part of military spending right? Nope. That’s covered under the energy department. Bio-weapons… part of the CDC. Military satellites? That’s part of NASA.
We’ve got military bases all over the world in 170 countries like we’re the Roman Empire claiming to be the police of the world.
We should be making 100% of our spending cuts from the military.
The U.S. Constitution defines and limits the role and scope of the U.S. military as being for the DEFENSE of the United States, not to be used to protect “American interests”, or secure oil supplies, or topple dictators or to prop them up, or to liberate oppressed people or to overthrow democratically elected governments (we’ve done both), or for humanitarian aid missions, or to train the military of other nations, or for nation building, or to posture and bully, and coerce, and cajole other nations into submission to our wishes as we’ve done with Australia by forcing them to adopt a zero tolerance drug policy by threatening to use the UN to prevent them from pharmaceutical poppy production.
The truth is we pay more for our military than every other military on earth combined when the hidden costs are accounted for.
We should get rid of medicaid and medicare by replacing them with a single-payer health care system modeled after the UK’s where they pay 1/3 of what we do and have better care and better results.
Then we should close each and every single U.S. Military base outside of our own country and cut military spending by 2/3, which would still give us the most expensive and powerful military on earth that is at least double the cost of any other military.
We need to end the war in Afghanistan and withdraw immediately.
Then we could cut all foreign aid, all business and farm subsidies, and raise taxes on the most wealthy including a 1.5% wealth tax on top of their income.
We could also punish American companies who move jobs overseas by raising their tax rates, forcing them to pay American tax on money earned overseas, and charging huge tariffs on importing any goods or services produced in an overseas location that was built after closing a similar American facility.
I think the most important part of your explanation, that most people seem ignorant to, is that Congress is responsible. I am amazed how so many people are quick to assign blame to the President, be it Obama or (Quincey) Bush. Apparently there were only a few people who ever paid attention in American History of Civics. More people should actually read Article II of the constitution. Then maybe the changes to the government that are needed can be made, vote out of office idiot Representatives and Senators!
I also think our “mandatory spending” is kind of messed up. The government is trying to come up with some elaborate way of fixing all of these problems so that they can keep everything that the seemingly can’t live without. In another video Hank was talking about how more money is coming in but it is going to fewer people. Our resources need to be evenly spread out, but the country also needs to find a away to become dependent on itself so that so that we can stop borrowing/stealing from other countries. Like renewable energy, etc.