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cover of episode This Is Why It's So Hard To Cut Public Spending

This Is Why It's So Hard To Cut Public Spending

2025/2/10
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Odd Lots

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F
Fritz Bartel
J
Joe Weisenthal
通过播客和新闻工作,提供深入的经济分析和市场趋势解读。
T
Tracy Alloway
知名金融播客主播和分析师,专注于市场趋势和经济分析。
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Joe Weisenthal: 我认为特朗普政府有降低赤字的意愿,但削减开支非常困难,因为大部分预算是社保、医保和国防等领域。削减这些领域的开支意味着打破对选民的承诺,这在民主政府中会带来负面影响。因此,民主政府需要建立政治能力来承受对特定群体的伤害,才能有效地削减开支。 Fritz Bartel: 我认为1970年代,美国、英国和苏联都面临资源和支出约束。二战后的经济繁荣已经触礁,出现了滞胀,西方经济体的生产力增长下降,苏联和东方集团的增长模式也走到了尽头。东西方社会都认为没有足够的资源来履行之前对选民做出的承诺。西方国家在冷战时期,不仅要创造财富,还要限制不平等。他们支持工会,建立广泛的福利国家,并承诺充分就业。东方国家也承诺缩短工作日,增加代际流动性,提供住房,但这些承诺并未完全兑现。西方银行家认为,在危机时刻,集权政府在实施紧缩政策和打破承诺方面更有优势。然而,1980年代的事件表明,民主选举赋予政府的合法性使其打破承诺更可信。在东方集团,集权主义在打破承诺方面非常薄弱,因为人民只期望政府能提供物质改善。资本主义国家通过将社会和经济责任从政府转移到市场来打破承诺。政治和经济之间的关系是复杂的,经济力量为政治领域提供了可能性,也关闭了其他可能性。我写这本书的时候,主要思考的是美国是如何在一个不可持续的政治经济体系中生存的。我开始这个项目是因为我了解到柏林墙倒塌时,东方集团欠西方900亿美元的债务。在档案中,我发现冷战双方的官员都非常关注国际金融、能源以及如何使紧缩政策合法化或打破对本国人民的承诺。苏联打破了干预以拯救盟友的承诺,因为他们认为帝国关系是一项糟糕的经济交易。他们也打破了提供低成本消费品、就业保障和社会经济保障的社会契约。波兰迅速引入休克疗法,希望通过短期的经济困难进入市场。休克疗法的目的是在大家还沉浸在战胜共产主义的喜悦中时,尽快完成经济转型。如何以更人道、更促进增长的方式进行工业结构调整是一个值得历史学家关注的问题。 Tracy Alloway: 我认为在当前的政治环境下,很难想象美国的支出或赤字轨迹会发生有意义的改变。政治家可能不受欢迎,但国家机构仍然享有很高的信誉。政治家和国家机构之间的区别是避免社会崩溃的关键。在共产主义制度中,国家与一切混合在一起,而在西方,政治和经济之间存在区别。我担心国家本身和政府的合法性正在受到攻击。

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The Trump administration has come into office with big ambitions to lower the size of the US deficit. So far, a number of small items have been identified as possible waste. But to meaningfully bend the curve on spending, there's widespread agreement that we'd have to look at things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense. This is hard stuff to cut and it's something that governments around the world have long struggled with. How do you pull back on a prior commitment that your constituency has come to expect? In this episode of the podcast, we speak with Firtz Bartel, an assistant professor of international affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. He is also the author of the recent book The Triumph of Broken Promises, which examines the simultaneous economic crisis in the US, UK, and Soviet Union during the 1970s, and how each country was forced economically to essentially "break promises." We talk about what it takes politically to maintain domestic credibility for any government while undergoing such wrenching choices, and why some systems are better suited for it than others.

Read More:Trump Tax Cuts’ Cost Estimated at $5 Trillion to $11 Trillion)Judge Temporarily Halts Trump, Musk Federal Worker ‘Buyout’)

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