Gorbachev said recently that the USA would need to carry out a series of radical reforms similar to those he carried out in the Soviet a couple of decades ago.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20090607/155193235.html

Do you agree with the man? If so, why, if not, why not?

"balanced budgets at any cost"? I don't know where he got that idea. It wasn't part of the equation at the time the USSR was falling that he was referring to, and balanced budgets were abandoned long before the recent hard times he also refers to.

I have a question, where did Perestroika get the Soviet Union? I think that answers if the US should follow that example.

Although the United States really needs major reductions in government spending (after all the municipal, state and the federal governments are all spending far more than they take in with little benefit for their citizens) I'm not so sure I would follow the example of the USSR ...

The place to start from that is to cut salaries of people in the house and senate and the president and after that cut the fat out of military spending in useless projects and such, like the F-22 and European missile defense were recently cut.

Being that the #1 expense of government today is some form of wealth transfer don't you think it would make sense to start there? While military spending is insane due to the United States being in two wars and having the most advanced military, it is still only 20% of the federal budget; which should demonstrate how moronically high the rest of the spending is.

Wealth transfer as in welfare and such programs? In that case, no I don't think it should be there.

2009 US federal budget as requested by the Bush administration:

• $644 billion - Social Security.
• $408 billion - Medicare.
• $224 billion - Medical and the SCHIP
• $360 billion - Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending

Combined those are 1.63 trillion dollars.

Meanwhile, the budget for the Department of Defense is $515.4 billion and the War on Terror is $145.2 billion, combined that is 660.6 billion dollars. While the spending on what you call welfare transfer is high the spending on defense is pretty high. Plus those figures do not include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama administration appropriated 130 billion for the Iraq war in 09 plus those costs do not include equipment lost in the field and damaged.

So $790 Billion in expenses out of a $3,550 Billion budget ... or 22.5% of the total budget is devoted to defence in the time of two wars when the US military is wasting money to have the largest and most advanced military. Don't you think it would be important to start with the other 77.5% of the budget?

Federal budget for 2009 is 3.1 trillion, I didn't include other expenditure like interest on debt and other spending.

I'm not saying spending cuts shouldn't happen outside the military and government salaries, but if you are going to balance the budget you need to cut spending and raise taxes for a while, I'm sure you wouldn't like that.

I dont see how Gorbachev's reforms of the Soviet Union, where the political elite were given private control of industry, and America's bailing out of big business, is fundamentally any different.  Take from the poor and give to the rich.