The Deficit? Yes we need to keep talking on this issue….it is too important to ignore and revert back to watching Dancing With The Stars……
The Deficit? You know that monetary problem that every politician has an opinion about? It is too high….or it is going to effect your children (and if you think your children are of any concern to politicians, then you are dumber than I originally thought)……or that it will subdue any and all economic prosperity…..on and on…and the song stays the same…..need to do something but NOBODY has a workable plan…..
Let us take a bit of time and look at the deficit through glasses that let us see into reality…..First of all Political wire has a very good piece on the deficit……
President Obama and many lawmakers say they will work to cut the federal deficit, but a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey underscores the challenges they may face in taking specific steps that could help reduce the red ink.
Key findings: 57% said they were uncomfortable with gradually raising the Social Security retirement age to 69 over the next 60 years, 70% were uncomfortable with making cuts to Medicare, Social Security and defense in order to reduce the deficit, 60% said they were uncomfortable with increasing tax revenue through measures such as raising the gasoline tax, limiting tax deductions on many home mortgages and altering corporate taxation.
Said pollster Peter Hart: “Everybody wants to cut the deficit and cut the spending. But at the end of the day, everybody wants a choice that doesn’t affect their well-being.”
But as I have said …not everyone sees the deficit in the same light…..Yahoo news blog, The Lookout has a pretty good look at the deficit….
Ever since concerns over the deficit took center-stage in Washington earlier this year, several prominent economists — all progressives — have been pushing back, claiming not simply that proposed spending cuts are too deep, or that the rich should be asked to sacrifice more. Rather, they’ve challenged the entire premise of the debate: that a budget shortfall caused by over-spending and under-taxation stands to put an undue burden on future generations, and that cuts to government programs, including Social Security, can help fix the problem. That view, they say, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s driving the deficit and how government spending works. In fact, they argue, as one recently put it, that “the current deficit is a positive.
“The starting point of the deficit contrarians’ argument is that the deficit was caused not by over-spending and under-taxation, as the current debate would have it, but by the collapse in tax revenues that resulted from the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent economic slump.
I guess I would be a deficit contrarian….I do not see where tweaking SS or earmarks or any of the proposals flying around Washington will do anything to make it better……things will get better when business returns to making things and selling things…..buying up other companies is not going to help the deficit….the stockholders maybe…but that has little to do with the deficit…..now does it?