The Consequences of Sequestration
Sequestration and Planetary Exploration, Future Planetary Exploration (Van Kane)
“I’d hoped that I’d never need to write this post. The latest news in the United States is that a poison pill known as the Sequester is looking increasingly likely. If it happens, it will be a body blow to NASA’s planetary science program.”
Sequestration: A Primer for the Perplexed, Science
“On 1 March, an $85-billion across-the-board cut in federal spending–the first step in a mandatory $1.2 trillion reduction over 10 years–will go into effect unless all sides agree to delay it or substitute something else. Indeed, when the Budget Control Act that created sequestration was enacted in August 2011, both sides expected to have an alternative in place by now. That didn’t happen.”
They’re going to need to replace the cuts in defense due winding down the two wars with something. While infrastructure spending would be good, spending more on exploration will contribute to Aerospace and Technology.
Nobody wants to see this happen, but the reality is that if you don’t take care of managing the essential basics first — annual budget, debt payments, increased interest charges, etc. — then everything will start to fall apart.
I think part of the problem is that words like “compromise” keep getting thrown around. I don’t think a compromise is an intelligent goal; rather, what they should be after is a solution that the majority can agree is “good enough.” Right now we have two parties who each seem to want to have things all their own way, with no willingness to “compromise.” In my opinion, this makes the major players on BOTH sides irresponsible and, given how long this has gone on, negligent.
I realize that it’s a tough situation to work out, but these people signed up for job, arguing that they were the right candidates to vote for. But now facing their first really tough challenge, this latest group of “powerful people” have demonstrated that they simply can’t get the job done — not because it’s impossibly hard, but because they’re collectively too pig headed to put the welfare of the nation ahead of their own opinions.
The really sad part, to me, is that there are many situations, many much more critical than NASA, which are going to suffer — and it’s the low-income, and to some extent the middle-income, people who are going to feel the effects the worst if this isn’t resolved, and resolved very quickly. Refresh my memory; wasn’t financial relief for the low- and middle-income families the one issue that both parties consistently and verbosely agreed on during the last election? This was a promise that both the Presidential candidates and the various Congress people and Governors who spoke out during the campaign claimed as their main goal, was it not?
I hope they don’t make the same mistakes they have just made in the UK. http://www.guardian.co.uk/b…
The best way to help low and middle income familes is to stimulate the economy to create jobs. It really doesn’t matter wether you do it by cutting taxes or increasing spending, they are equivalent as far as MMT is concerned. The fact remains that the US can never involuntarily default on it’s debt, it’s not like the States and Municipalities or Greece or Corporations who are not currency issuers. I think there is too much focus on the debt side of debt/gdp and not enough on getting GDP going. To some extent its a huge experiment in somewhat uncharted territory, but we have seen simply cutting spending and raising taxes has not worked well overseas.
James,
I don’t disagree with you, but I think it’s important to stress that simple economic growth is not a solution — it has to be targeted growth to put any increased wealth into the hands that really need it.
There are lots of industries/companies that have seen significant growth over the last couple of decades, but the increased income ended up as profits paid to shareholders who were already in the upper income brackets. The “working” people and the unemployed didn’t see any of that, but it’s still counted as “economic growth.”
The same, I think, applies to job creation. New jobs for highly skilled professionals, most of whom are already employed but will change jobs to make more money, don’t do anything for either the unemployed or the underpaid. And the toughest part of this problem is one for which there has never been a solution — job security.
One part of the problem is a necessary increase in education spending, but look at how people reacted when President Obama seriously proposed that. This makes things harder because of the need to help people in spite of themselves.
If things continue as they are, I think North Americans are going to end up in need of a Roosevelt-type New Deal program (hopefully applied before we get into another full-scale economic depression). But that still leaves one significant group not addressed — the families who have been getting by well enough over the years but now find themselves sliding down to into hard times.
Some people put themselves in trouble by spending foolishly, but many families, who have lived sanely, now find that they can’t pay their monthly bills or eat properly, let alone afford luxuries like a vacation or sending their kids to university. The cost of living continues to grow faster than incomes do, and families formerly getting by are now in increasing financial trouble. How can we change the economic trends to reverse this? How are these people to be helped before an even greater number of families are dependent on social assistance and fewer than ever are paying into it? All of which increases the debt and decreases the GDP, so we can’t really treat them as separate from economic growth and job creation.
As much as I am a space nut and follow NASA daily, realistically, I think there are more pressing needs for increased spending, and I include (useful) education in that list.
Sorry to go on so painfully long about this, but the same answers keep giving the same ineffective results, because, I strongly believe, past measure have not been targeted at those who need them, which just might be a reflection on the people who have been planning and implementing them, who have perhaps been targeting people in their income bracket instead of those who really need the help.
Steve
I agree with what you say. I have been thinking that there needs to be a significant amount of rethinking about how our economy works since as technology and automation increase productivity, society will need fewer and fewer workers to produce goods and services. We are faced with a post industrial revolution. There needs to be a source of income to sustain demand when a significant portion of the population is not employed producing goods and services for consumption. If we don’t then there’s going to be deflation which will just make demand fall further.
James,
Right on. Many countries have failed to face the inevitable for quite a while. Zero unemployment is not realistic.
A reasonable permanent unemployment figure needs to be determined, probably as a percentage of the population rather than a specific number, and then we need to find ways to deal with that as the goal, rather than continuing to pretend that the unemployment problem can be “fixed.”
This idea is certainly not new; it goes back at least several decades in both economics theory and science fiction. However, if even someone came up with a perfect game plan, transitioning to it from here and now will probably be really tough on a lot of people.Steve
MMT Profs Bill Mitchell & Jamie Galbraith have this concept of a job guarantee pool rather than an unemployment pool.
In reply to James Lundblad @ 1:47PM:
I’ve seem similar concepts proposed. The problem is how do you “create” enough jobs for the people who need them, and specifically a mix of jobs that matches the capabilities of those people in need of a job?
Among the employed we already have PhD’s working garbage trucks and technologists doing grade 4 assembly work because the highly trained can’t find enough work in their fields. The problem has got to be many times harder for those with no skills or no required skills.
There are things like community service “jobs” and incentives for starting your own company as alternatives for part of the problem, but overall, it probably costs a lot less to pay people unemployment benefits than to create job situations for them.
When it’s a matter of pride, there are always volunteer ways to contribute to society in exchange for these benefits — painting schools, managing or coaching amateur sports leagues, teaching classes in what one knows that isn’t part of the education system, collecting garbage from abandoned properties, etc.
At the other end of the situation, I wonder how many people among the unemployed wouldn’t take a job, of any kind, if it was offered to them. An awful lot of people must be watching afternoon soap operas if they can afford to pay for commercials. How much harder is it to solve a problem for people who don’t want a solution?
There needs to be a source of income to sustain demand when a significant portion of the population is not employed producing goods and services for consumption.
There are over 1 million jobs currently open in this country related to the production of goods for consumption that cannot be filled due to lack of training and or education.
“The best way to help low and middle income familes is to stimulate the economy to create jobs.”
I hope they will not have to compete with robots, http://spectrum.ieee.org/po…
Michael,
As usual, I think the proposals this guy makes are way too optimistic, both in terms of time frame (2045 is only 32 years away), and in terms of what the government regulatory people — and more importantly, the common people — will accept.
Companies are not going to develop product for which they don’t think there’s a sufficient market, and a market won’t exist as long as people are uncomfortable with the idea of robots/AI doing all these things. Not only will there be resentment against robots stealing jobs (realistic or not), but I think there will be a basic fear of being surrounded by these things, particularly mobile robots.
And given the current state of the art, I don’t consider that fear unreasonable. If a robot taxi malfunctions and refuses to obey a stop command, what do you do if you’re in its path? It’s easy to imagine all kinds of similar what-ifs that are perfectly plausible.
And finally, I think there’s a big overestimation of the current capabilities of “robots” and AI by the professional people who should know better as well as the common people. A (properly functioning) robot can do only what it is specifically programmed to do, unless it is equipped with a learning version of AI, and even the very best AI systems around are still much more limited in capability than people seem to think (forget Terminator).
I’m sure there will be some near term examples, like the robots “waiting tables” in the podcast, but they will be novelties and few in number, not a new work force to displace thousands of people, not for a lot longer than in 2045. In general, the current production robots in use probably create far more jobs than they take away by making companies more productive, which requires more employees to do the jobs that robots can’t do, since significantly greater quantities of product are being built, helped by the fact that automation brings down the unit production costs and therefore the selling price.
Steve
“but the reality is that if you don’t take care of managing the essential
basics first — annual budget, debt payments, increased interest
charges, etc. — then everything will start to fall apart.”
Yes to the first point (“take care of essentials”)– but you’re wrong about the second part. The “essential” is fixing the economy… but the problem with the economy is NOT the debt: that is a consequence of the poor economy, not the cause. If you improve the economy, the economic growth will mean the deficit will fall, both in relative terms (the key parameter is not deficit,but deficit as a fraction of GNP) and in absolute terms (higher economy means larger revenues to the government to pay debts).
Data shows that countries don’t cut debt by spending cuts; they cut debt by economic growth.
No argument from me Geoff. I said “debt payments,” as opposed to the size of the debt itself. I guess I should have been more specific and said interest payments on the debt. Whether you’re a person or a country, if you fail to pay your debt interest, and/or any expected portion of debt repayment, on time, then your credit rating suffers, which reduces your future options and opportunities almost immediately, giving you less control over your “economy,” and “then everything will start to fall apart.”
To bring about economic growth it is necessary to spend money, generally borrowed money, which means increased debt, which becomes unavailable to you if your credit rating is in question. Obviously, the gamble is in using borrowed money in such a way that you make a “profit,” so that you end up with more money (or other “wealth”) than just what is needed to cover the debt payments. I think part of the problem is that countries don’t stick to this idea, any more than many individuals tend to.
If you borrow money that doesn’t give you a return greater than the cost of borrowing, then you’re just going further into the hole, like using your MasterCard to make your monthly VISA payments (or fighting war in Iraq). That downward spiral spells doom. This is why I said above that we can’t separate the debt and GDP (or GNP is you prefer) from economic growth and job creation. A change in any one of them will affects all of the others.
I think we are basically seeing this in the same way. The only difference is my insistence that economic growth, in and of itself, is not necessarily desirable for the country, but rather we need specifically targeted economic growth. Growth in the wrong sectors/industries can actually hurt the overall economy rather than solve the problems that are costing so much to deal with. When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, then some very wrong decisions have been made.
If current trends continue, then I think “the poor” will equalize the situation by bringing “the rich” down to their level, since they have no way to pull themselves up to the “rich” level. They’ll do this simply by being in perpetual need of social assistance in amounts that the current fiscal policies simply aren’t prepared for.
Dead on, Geoff. And if December economic results are predictive, the sequester will put a huge damper on the entire economy. The deficit crazy people are making a huge mess.
I hate to be bitter here, but, really?
The Planetary Sciences community has been asking for MORE money even when NASA’s budget was essentially flat-lined over the next 5 years in order to save Webb and SLS.
And anyone who thinks throwing more money at NASA will make the economy magically grow needs to stop selling books and look at actually putting in fixes so the agency better spends the money it has.
Planetary science supporters should start actively campaigning to axe SLS, based upon ROI for science returned.
Advocating that SLS is cancelled should be priority #1 for anyone affiliated with manned space flight.
Priority #2 should be getting all of the Civil Servant managers that chose SLS terminated.
cmon….all you need to do is connect the dots
Shelby…..SLS
Mikulski….Webb
That is NASAs future! You cant fight it just have to work around it.
The Agency is run by Congress with little or no interest from Obama.
Ergo whoever has the Congressional power (see above) sets the agenda
for the future not what we in the general population want but that’s
the way its gonna be. Heck, Shelby would move the whole Agency to
Marshall if he could….LMAO
I wonder exactly what ‘body blow’ means. What percentage reduction, for example? And where are the cuts?
Many times, crisis and necessity provide the means to improve the process and the product. According to the article, NASA’s planetary science budget is about $1 Billion per year and poised to shrink by 20%. The programs are driven by pure science objectives, ranked by the scientists.
What I find frustrating is most of the benefits to these programs (aside from research papers) is incidental to the programs. I’m talking about applied science and technology. This exclusive focus on pure science largely prevents the NASA planetary science department to partner with private industry or HSF on projects.
Take OSIRIS-REX for example. This is a $1 Billion dollar program to do a sample return on a carbonaceous (C-type) asteroid. The samples will help learn about the solar system’s early history of development. At the same time, a private company, Planetary Resources, would like to mine asteroids and needs to do applied science to do it (find suitable asteroids and learn their properties). IF the NASA Planetary Science division were to recognize other priorities besides PhD research papers, then they could partner with private industry and split the costs.
Maybe budget cuts will provide the motivation for NASA to develop public/private partnerships on these programs or at least cross the bridge and talk to HSF for joint missions.
Everyone should remember that public sector spending is private sector income, and unless the money gets stuffed under the matress it’s used to buy goods and services throughout the economy creating demand outside of the planetary science community.
Todd,
While sharing the costs would be an advantage for everyone, the goals and priorities of the science community and private industry are not the same, except in the very abstract sense. Trying to plan a program to satisfy both parties, I think, would either end up in a compromise that satisfies no one, or end up being a lot more complex and expensive than what either party needs. NASA history has many examples of the former, the Space Shuttle being one case.
I think that if you want to find ways to share/split costs, then you need to approach it in terms of a technology, rather than a program, where NASA is an enabler and private industry is the producer.
Steve
I agree applied technology demonstrations are easier to fit within a planetary science mission. Smart-1, for example, demonstrated ion thrust propulsion. Within a planetary science spacecraft, there is typically more than one science instrument. Often, these instruments are vastly different. They compete for power, mass, cost, and yet they are integrated; it’s so common and understood that no one questions it. There is no fundamental difference between integrating TAGSAM and integrating a mining drill. I’m merely suggesting that there are real advantages to broaden the participation of the program to include private sector companies or the human spaceflight division.
Osiris-Rex is a NASA mission to a Near Earth Asteroid. The president directed NASA’s HSF to visit a NEA and yet Osiris-Rex was not designed in any way to help HSF. Nor was it designed to help private industry mine asteroids. The costs associated with the launch vehicle and the spacecraft support systems could have been split with HSF or private industry if Osiris-Rex had incorporated an ISRU (in space resource utilitization) demonstrator, a mining demonstrator, or a berthing demonstrator. While the program would be different and possibly more complex, I’m certain it would be cheaper than separate missions. I would also argue that joint missions enjoy a more stable funding and garner wider public support.
Not every planetary science program has an easy tie-in with HSF or private industry, but those that are going to an NEA, the Moon or Mars should always seek partnership opportunities.
Excellent documentary on the early history of the Silicon Valley. Where did the demand come from that got this place going? watch online or on your local PBS station to find out.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ame…
Sounds like Sequestration would take 0.5-1% out of GDP depending upon the multiplier an raise the unemployment rate by about the same factor.
1% of $18 billion is $180 million. I would think somebody will notice.
I think he meant 1% of the US budget for space, which would be $37 billion per year. We can afford it, it jus isn’t a priority to Democrats or Republicans unless the money is spent in their district.