The Biggest Government......Ever
By Spartan4Life Posted in Taxes — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Okay. So it is official. We are now at an all time high for government spending AND revenue. Read about it here
There is so much wrong with this it is hard to know where to even begin. We have record revenues at the same time our deficit is spiraling up? This all happened under a "Republican" president and Congress? The Democrats want to raise our taxes even more? I just have to laugh when I hear President Bush saying we should give another $100B to Africa to fight aids, most of which ends up in the hands of corrupt politicians, BTW, or that we need to save Myranmar from the ravages of their cyclone. Doesn't anybody in Washington get it?
We are broke. There is no more blood in the stone. The only way they could get any more revenue is to tax people that aren't already paying taxes("the middle class"). Something tells me that won't gain alot of popular support.
But, what I think is most depressing about this is that the prevailing attitude in our country seems to be that the government needs even MORE money to fund the free health care, clean up the environment, end world hunger, have cats and dogs get along, and whatever else the politicians need to promise in order to get elected. Have Americans gone soft in the head? When did we unlearn the absolute truth that big government is 110% guaranteed to screw up everything they touch?
Put me down as undecided.
is it a high though adjusted for inflation AND as a Percent of GDP?
The other day I was talking to a neighbor. He is 75, has lived with is wife on a beautiful property for decades, and now they have to sell it because they cannot afford the property tax. When the economy is retracting, that doesn't mean the government gets to continue growing and raising taxes.
Even better yet, we should be trying to grow our economy so we can lower taxes and fight AIDS or send spacecrafts to Jupiter or whatever we want. How to ensure the future growth (and not decline) of the American economy?
1. Make sure we have a supply of cheap abundant energy, whatever it takes to do that. Forget the hippies and build nuclear reactors, liquify coal, plaster the deserts with solar generators, whatever seems rational.
2. Make sure your young people are raised to understand the power of science, engineering and free enterprise, so we will continue to be the leading inventors and entrepreneurs of the world.
Whenever the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out their employment reports, I always read them carefully.
The government (including states, localities and teachers) are adding tens of thousands of new jobs every month. Almost every other sector is contracting, except for healthcare, which is quasi-government anyway.
And this is all happening with a Republican Administration. Just wait till next year.
Economists have known since Adam Smith, the wealth of a nation is created by human productivity. Look at how impoverished many oil-rich states are, and then look at how wealthy Japan, with almost no natural resources, is. It's all about investing in the development of your people with education, and instilling work ethic and a hopeful can-do attitude.
We're paying for our government now, in part, by selling T-bills to China and Sinapore. How long is that scam is going to last? Republican or Democrat, our leadership is afraid to talk straight to people.
Why is our economy contracting? Maybe because we cannot be a global economic super power by selling fast food to each other. And when someone does generate new wealth, someone like Bill Gates or the Movie industry, the get pulled down by leftists and "freetards".
The short answer is: indefinitely.
Keep in mind that the economy is measured in dollars, which the government has total control over. They can print a literally infinite amount of money. The normal inflationary effects of this are muted because the rest of the world accepts our money too. (How long will that last? Probably indefinitely, for reasons that would take up a long post by themselves.)
Where the effects of inflation do show up, however, (and I can make a case that deficit spending is economically equivalent to printing money), is that our consumption is allocated less and less by market forces. That ultimately has the effect of destroying private incentives to productivity and leads to the other ills you describe so well.
The US economy is not contracting. We are in a recession (or at least a period of below-trend growth) as a result of disorders in global credit markets. Even after things return to normal, however, and we come back up to trend-line growth, our growth will still be far slower than that of quite a handful of other countries.
Absolute size does count for something, but the dynamism that comes from fast growth counts (arguably) for much more.
It seems everyday we hear of a new spending or tax proposal like AIDs assistance, rebates, GW initiatives etc. etc. We are in the red and the President or a candidate will come up with another great idea like sending the 50 billion you talked about to a rathole or Obama's "genius" idea of raising capital gains taxes. I'm not sure how many ways you can tell third world countries to use protection that adds up to 50 billion and I don't understand why Obama doesn't understand how many millions of middle class Americans (like me)would be hurt with a capital gains tax. It's almost like their trying to ransack the treasury before it's all gone.
What the hell is going on out here? - Vince Lombardi