Cutting military spending that had ballooned during the tail-end of the cold war combined with an economy that thrived as computers and the internet began to really take off at the consumer level (cheaper home… or personal computers PC) and dial-up becoming more mainstream and affordable (AOL signup CD’s with 100 free hours.)
America was moving away from manufacturing to financial services as well which in the short term allowed wall street to make massive profits. Also note that during Clintons presidency there was very limited military action verse winning over allies via various global trading arrangements.
And what lots of people forget is that Clinton was a more moderate democrat. He didn’t really expand social programs all that much, in fact he made welfare more difficult to qualify for as a compromise with GOP legislatures.
So costs were cut, technology was profiting, those budding industries still required human labor which was often domestic, we had cheap goods coming in from other nations and many nations were peacefully joining in on global trade, social services stayed the same and the big baby boom social security drain hadn’t began yet and the administration was willing to work with the GOP on legislation. Not too hard to balance a budget with those circumstances.
Keep in mind that a balanced budget was step one in reducing the deficit, they are not the same thing. However, if the trends had been maintained we’d have been deficit free by 2010 or so and we’d have had social security funded for the foreseeable future.
Our future was stolen from us by Big Oil and the Military Industrial Complex.
Greed. It’s as simple as that. Greedy corporations, greedy Wall Street bankers and the greedy citizens that permitted the deregulation of business, finance and politics stole our future.
Economist back in the 1950’s were predicting that productivity would increase to a point where we’d all work 3-4 days a week and have a higher standard of living than was available at the time. We got the productivity increases but greed syphoned it off to the CEO’s and Board members instead of the workers.
Yes, you are correct. I suppose I should have included finance and all their garbage financial instruments like derivatives.
You were right as well, like most things there were numerous factors at play. Greed is sort of an answer that is too broad, to be fair, but the specifics are complex.
And techbros and Wall Street and all those little regional corporations that accrue millions a year in excess profit. It’s all the rich people.
The future was monetized and sold back to us with the idea that anyone who can’t afford to pay can’t afford to live but no one calls it a genocide when it’s against a diverse socioeconomic class.
Social security is NOT part of balancing the budget. Other than that this seems accurate.
Saving Social Security was not part of how he balanced the budget but it was an objective he outlined often as to why balancing the budget was a good thing to do and what we should do with the surplus.
President Bill Clinton achieved a federal budget surplus in the late 1990s by combining the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and strong economic growth, while using the “Save Social Security First” initiative to propose dedicating projected surpluses to the Social Security trust fund
I mentioned it because we shouldn’t be in the situation we’re entering into (being unable to cover Social Security) because we had an easy way to cover the cost 2 decades ago. Younger generations, who will be taxed higher by the older demographics to cover their Social Security need to be aware of this so they get off their asses and vote.
Agree. Removing the cap on SS income contributions is a better way.
The problem with contributing general funds is that then they could take from it for general funds. There is a reason why it’s separate.
Most people get confused by how SS works and so we should be average when communicating about it.
But the shareholders and CEO’s!!!
Yeah. Removing the cap on SS is a pipe dream same as overturning Citizens United. Socialist ideals like those just aren’t practical because eventually you run out of rich people to tax but they’ll be eager as hell to cut social safety nets further and increase taxes on our incomes to pay only a small additional percentage of those obligations because they never consider that eventually you run out of middle class people to tax.
People aren’t stupid or ignorant to how SS works in my experience, they’re apathetic to it. Theres a reason society snubbed Clintons pitch of using that budget surplus to cover SS costs and instead elected Duh-b-ya so they could get that fat tax refund “they earned.”
and a big market bubble was building .
Dot com boom
Hiring staff for cheap blowjobs instead of paying girls on the street.
