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## Why the Commerce Department?

Mundane & Pointless Stuff I Must Share: The Off Topic Forum

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Morat
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Post by Morat » Sat Nov 19, 2011 10:11 pm

> fbmf wrote:

> > DSMatticus wrote: If you live with your parents, you don't get to boast about how you went out and bought a brand new luxury car in cash. It may be true, but you wouldn't have been able to do it if someone else weren't paying for rent.

> I guess that the difference: I'm okay with people bragging about not having a car payment even if they live with their parents. They did pay for the car with their own money. The car is in their name. They own it.
> Game On,
> fbmf

Sure, but money is fungible. It's equally accurate to say that the person paid their living expenses and their parents bought them the car. So the person in question can just say, "Oh, I pay my living expenses," and separately claim, "I bought a new car," so long as they don't claim both simultaneously. They may be "true" (ish) statements, but also very disingenuous.
I mean, if Texas is fully funding their own education system, then they should equally claim that the feds are paying for damn near everything else. But they don't. They say they pay for this state agency in one statement, that state agency in another, and so on; carefully leaving out that it's equivalent to stating that the feds pay for most things, and rhetorically shifting state funds around doesn't mean they pay for everything.
Last edited by Morat on Sat Nov 19, 2011 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata » Sun Nov 20, 2011 1:33 am

Again though, keeping stuff like Fort Hood in Texas isn't the decision of the state government. It's the property of the Federal government.
Moreover, even with the additional cash inflows from the Fed a quick look at the Texas GDP will show that it's actually one of the richer states in the union. It can probably balance its budgets even without further Federal inflows (except for the IRS direct payments, but again this is money the Fed is taking from Texan citizens anyway) so long as it doesn't let its big debt go even further out of control.
Put it another way, that person who bought the luxury car has enough money to move out of their parent's home anyway - but mom and dad insist on keeping him around.
Last edited by Zinegata on Sun Nov 20, 2011 1:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Sun Nov 20, 2011 2:13 am

That's not really a fair analysis. We're having trouble finding exactly how much Texas depends on the federal state for benefits. But we do know that (using the websites you're providing as a source):
1) Texas state and local governments spend 27 or 41 billion more than they take in (it gives two different numbers in two different places).
2) The federal government spends ~30 billion more in Texas than it receives from Texas in federal revenue.
So consider the hypothetical super-radical conservative wet dream where Texas stops paying federal taxes and instead pockets that money itself and leaves the union, rejecting federal interference, but at the same time tries to keep everything else the same by supporting those federal programs themself. They're now eating that discrepancy in federal spending v. federal revenue of 30 billion dollars, which nearly doubles their deficit. Now, you can say, "well, all that federal stuff will just disappear," but that federal stuff is bringing in a net positive 30 billion dollars a year to the Texas economy and if that stuff disappears then so does that net positive 30 billion dollars. No matter how you cut it, federal spending is injecting 30 billion yearly into the Texas economy and if they tried to do that themselves it would double their deficit.
Of course, this is all assuming:

> Zinegata wrote:The Federal spending tab in the link shows you the amount of money spent by the Federal government in the state of Texas for its own projects - i.e. military bases like Fort Hood.

which is slightly unclear, because this website does a piss poor job of describing what its numbers actually represent.
And I don't think, "would double your deficit without mom and dad" is "self-sufficience."
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tzor
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Post by tzor » Sun Nov 20, 2011 3:22 am

> DSMatticus wrote:If you live with your parents, you don't get to boast about how you went out and bought a brand new luxury car in cash. It may be true, but you wouldn't have been able to do it if someone else weren't paying for rent.

I knew a guy who was so rich he used to buy his cars in cash. He used to be my boss. He once moved his company and all employees who wanted to go to Key West, Fl.
When one of his workers asked for him to co-sign a loan, the bank refused. All that cash meant he had no paper trail for a credit rating. He literally could have bought the car for him but he could not be considered valid for a loan co-sign.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sun Nov 20, 2011 8:55 pm

The US federal government spends more on Texas than the state of Texas does. The US federal government also mandates that the state of Texas have a public education system and much of the funding decisions about how it will be operated.
To put this in the parents vs. you buying the thing example: imagine if your parents gave you $10 and told you that you had to buy a $5 gallon of milk. You picked up a $5 bill out of your own petty cash and bought the gallon of milk with it. And you kept the money and dutifully told your parents that the gallon of milk had been bought. You could claim that the milk was bought with 100% your own money, but that would be really fucking stupid. And that's basically what the state of Texas does.
To answer fbmf's question: if the government mandated that you host a message board as a contingency for you getting your wages, you're damn fucking right this would be a government message board. The state of Texas has a few things that it pays for that the US federal government doesn't give a crap about. Those things can properly be labeled state projects, even if they are paid for with dollars from federal transfers. The education system is not like that, because the federal government mandates its operation in addition to funding the state coffers.
-Username17
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Mon Nov 21, 2011 1:12 am

To be fair, Texas also pays more in federal taxes than it seems to generate in state and local taxes, so the fact that Texas also gets more federal money than it generates through state and local taxes could actually be totally proportional and within reason.
Though, it turns out to be the case that factoring in federal spending v federal revenue and putting that burden on Texas would double their annual deficit, so the point holds. Half of the actual deficit between money generated in Texas (all levels of government) and money pumped back into Texas (all levels of government) is being covered by the federal government, and that's pretty significant.
Of course, that's operating on the assumption that any of the numbers provided so far are reliable. The actual numbers can only be worse, due to overlap on the revenue end and pseudo-laundering.
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