Comment by detourdog
2 months ago
Early 90’s during the Clinton administration (and the dot com boom) appeared to be the best run US budgeting process I have ever seen.
2 months ago
Early 90’s during the Clinton administration (and the dot com boom) appeared to be the best run US budgeting process I have ever seen.
Yes, but global reserves are the domestic total foreign debit, and the government does not control that one. (I mean, it can weight in how it grows, but it's not the one that makes it.)
I think what you are saying is the sum total of global economic activity from the US point of view is foreign debt. The US has no direct control over this debt other than control of printing treasuries.
Is that fair interpretation.
The world's dollar reserves are the US foreign debit.
The US government didn't create that debit. It's not the government's debit. They can influence people, but they don't control that one.
another POV is he was extremely lucky
Pfizer decided to NOT commercialize its GLP-1 drug (https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/09/glp-1-history-pfizer-joh...) in 1992.
What if it had commercialized GLP1s?
The law that prevented Medicare from paying for weight loss drugs like GLP1s, the MMA, was passed in 2003. So Medicare would have to pay.
YEAR NOM. ADJ 23 NET NET ($B) ($B) 10% 100%
Okay, only 4 surplus years. 10% uptake of GLP1s, okay, they'd be in surplus. 100% uptake, it would be a deficit.
Any number of things could have happened. This was just one thing that definitely was completely in control of people - it was in the control of Pfizer's commercialization team - it wasn't some unforeseeable crisis.
My point is, the little HN takes here and there like yours, better to not make them, because frankly you don't know anything about the budgeting process or governance, so why say anything at all?
I don't doubt he was lucky which is why I parenthetical referred to the dot com boom. I don't quite understand the relevancy of GLP1s to his luck. I think obesity wasn't what it is today back in the 90's.
I think the saying is Luck rewards the prepared.
I mean, luck is always a part of it, but you need responsible policy too. The US was lucky from 2010 to 2020, with the the economy growing basically that whole stretch, and we still ran a massively growing deficit the entire time because we decided to try and reform the middle east while lowering taxes.
A really important detail that I don't think gets enough mention is that the second gulf war was paid for off the books. The war was not part of the federal budget.
would his policy have been to pay for GLP1s? Yes. And is that a little more than a hypothetical? yes. People who don't know US budgets don't know what drives faster-than-GDP growth in expenses (it's real estate, biotech and college).
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