This Capitalist Gets It. Capitalists without Consumers are Out of Business

• BoatShoes

  BGFalcons82;1025090 wrote:No No No, Fish. Ultimately, it's the government's money and they ALLOW people to keep some of what they earn.

  Why do you always have to obfuscate like that? Making the claim that we're going to have to get at least back to 18% of GDP in revenue up from the 14% it's been if not more, in conjunction with spending cuts over the next decade in our to get our budget situation under control in no way is saying that a person's money belongs to the the government. Nobody says anything remotely close to that. But we all unfortunately have a debt burden that we have to deal with just like a husband who picked the wrong wife who went crazy with her credit card.
  
  If you want to deal with it it's not going to come from spending cuts alone and most of america doesn't want it to come from spending cuts alone. With that said, since we're going to have to put some revenue on the table....should we just get it from middle and lower income earners as every republican plan wants to do. OR, should we also ask higher income earners to contribute more revenue for budget purposes in addition to middle and lower income earners (especially considering middle and lower income earners have not gotten a meaningful raise in 30 years). You can't balance the budget anytime soon with only 14-16% of GDP in revenue and under 2% economic growth.
• BGFalcons82

  

  BoatShoes;1025109 wrote:Why do you always have to obfuscate like that? Making the claim that we're going to have to get at least back to 18% of GDP in revenue up from the 14% it's been if not more, in conjunction with spending cuts over the next decade in our to get our budget situation under control in no way is saying that a person's money belongs to the the government. Nobody says anything remotely close to that. But we all unfortunately have a debt burden that we have to deal with just like a husband who picked the wrong wife who went crazy with her credit card.
  
  If you want to deal with it it's not going to come from spending cuts alone and most of america doesn't want it to come from spending cuts alone. With that said, since we're going to have to put some revenue on the table....should we just get it from middle and lower income earners as every republican plan wants to do. OR, should we also ask higher income earners to contribute more revenue for budget purposes in addition to middle and lower income earners (especially considering middle and lower income earners have not gotten a meaningful raise in 30 years). You can't balance the budget anytime soon with only 14-16% of GDP in revenue and under 2% economic growth.

  Obfuscating...hmmm.
  
  You keep bringing up spending cuts. These NEVER EVER happen, yet here you are pining away for them like they will happen just because the Left wants it so. Here's what they want, and this tune is so old, it was originally crafted on a wire recorder:
  
  1. Higher tax rates go into effect immediately, if not sooner. OK OK, the next taxable year. Happy? Instant gratification, as it were.
  2. The so-called "Spending Cuts" go into effect over some time frame...the current scenario seems to be a "10 year plan". These cuts, whilst promised, NEVER take place for a myriad of reasons, i.e. "emergencies", wars, economic downturns, a brand new Congress every 2 years, bad hair day, and my personal fave..."we didn't know it was this bad, so we can't cut anything".
  3. The so-called "Spending Cuts" aren't even that. They are reductions in the increase of baseline budgeting. Currently, the baseline is 7% increases. How and why they come up with that magic turd of a percent is beyond me. Then, when a budget is reduced by 5%, it is hailed by the Left and their sycophants in the media as a 5% cut when in reality is a 2% increase. Then the loud whining, crying, and mashing of teeth begin as those supposedly having their ox gored aks for even MORE funding. This parlor trick has been going on for decades, and here we are talking about it yet again.
  
  Your incessant clamoring for spending cuts, while laudable, is naive and fruitless....nee disingenous possibly? Your method of arguing and prescribing them is also a time-tested treasure. It is for the very reasons above that the Republicans in one of the first debates said they would not sign on a budget "deal" that includes $10 in spending "cuts" for each $1 in tax increases. They've never happened and they never will. I've used the Peanuts storyline of Lucy (the Left) promising to not remove the football and let poor Charlie (conservatives) kick it. And after much cajoling, coersion, and haranguing, he tries again, believing her this time. It's time to stop believing Lucy and maybe run up and kick her in the ass for lying for soooooo friggin long.
• BoatShoes

  BGFalcons82;1025075 wrote:Your analogy works as long as the tax code hasn't changed by one word in 26 years. Even if only 100 pages were added per year (a very LOW estimate), then there would be 2,600 new pages of tax code since your magical growth tax rate was in effect.
  
  Comparing tax rates from different eras with completely different tax rules is like comparing gingerbread men to fruitcake. But I have a feeling it won't stop y'all.

  What a marginal tax rate means is that Ronald Reagan was ok with somebody at the margin who earns 118k paying 49% of her income in taxes...regardless of whatever available deductions or credits are available...for most of his presidency. Barack Obama wants nobody at the margin to pay more than 39.6% of their income to the federal government via the income tax.
• BGFalcons82

  

  BoatShoes;1025189 wrote:What a marginal tax rate means is that Ronald Reagan was ok with somebody at the margin who earns 118k paying 49% of her income in taxes...regardless of whatever available deductions or credits are available...for most of his presidency. Barack Obama wants nobody at the margin to pay more than 39.6% of their income to the federal government via the income tax.

  I knew it wouldn't stop y'all...shocking....simply shocking.
• fish82

  

  Footwedge;1025084 wrote:Hooo boy....what a Fishy beatdown. People should be very careful when they ask for links. Yes indeed, we have had collectively the lowest marginal tax rates over the last 10 years, and yet, with all that money in the pocket of Americans, the exonomy continues to sput, sput, sputter.

  Where's the beatdown again? You guys are honestly equating random comments about "closing loopholes" to raising marginal tax rates? Good one, bro...keep it up!! :rolleyes:
  
  Oh, and the quote he attributes to Reagan appears nowhere in the link he provided.
  
  You were saying? Fish is still standing, wedgie....as usual.
• fish82

  

  BoatShoes;1024997 wrote:At the time Reagan was lobbying for the Tax Reform Act of 1986
  
  [video=youtube;cgbJ-Fs1ikA][/video]
  
  And he said this later that summer in Illinois;
  
  "Just a few moments ago, I told some people inside the building here of a letter that I just received the day before yesterday. It's a letter from a man out here in the country, an executive who's earning in six figures -- well above $100,000 a year. He wrote me in support of the tax plan because he said, “I am legally able to take advantage of the present tax code -- nothing dishonest, doing what the law prescribes -- and wind up paying a smaller salary than my secretary gets -- or I mean, paying a smaller -- I'm sorry, paying a smaller tax than my secretary pays.” And he wrote me the letter to tell me he'd like to come to Washington and testify before Congress as to how that's possible for him to do and why it is wrong."
  
  http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1985/62885a.htm
  

  1. As I state above...equating statements about random "loopholes" with raising marginal rates and "paying their fair share" is not only not in context as I requested...it's pretty disingenuous. That said, I knew that's exactly the tack you would take. So predictable.
  
  B. The "quote" you attribute to Reagan appears nowhere in your linked source. Try again.
• gut

  BGFalcons82;1025179 wrote: Currently, the baseline is 7% increases.

  Good lord, that's significantly higher than what nominal GDP growth has average over the last 20 years or more (it's probably only exceeded that a handful of times => talking real GDP growth in the neighborhood of 4%).
  
  No wonder the deficits keep getting bigger. I've never worked at a company where the default assumption is just a baseline increase in the budget, much less one that exceeds expected revenue growth.
• fish82

  

  BoatShoes;1025022 wrote:Well we've already had this debate and I provided sources for the Tax Policy Center that indicate that a great percentage of high income earners can manage to pay lower effective rates than many middle income taxpayers. Mitt Romney for instance may pay as low an effective rate as 14%. It's hard to say given his limited financial disclosures. And, as has been covered, Warren Buffet claims his effective rate to be 17%. There is no doubt. NO DOUBT that at least some middle income earners pay a higher effective rate than some millionaires.

  As often as you cite this one example (your only one really) you never mention the obvious fix. Raise the short-term capital gains rate to 30%...poof...problem solved. No need to monkey with the marginal rates at all, right?
  
  Oh wait...that wouldn't accomplish what you people are really after, now would it?
  
  So easy.
• Footwedge

  majorspark;1024463 wrote:You are making a hell of a case against it with Henry Ford.

  What do you have against Henry? He was a genius.
• Footwedge

  fish82;1025199 wrote:1. As I state above...equating statements about random "loopholes" with raising marginal rates and "paying their fair share" is not only not in context as I requested...it's pretty disingenuous. That said, I knew that's exactly the tack you would take. So predictable.
  
  B. The "quote" you attribute to Reagan appears nowhere in your linked source. Try again.

  I think Reagan's inference is pretty effin clear. Certain millionaires have the capability to reduce their marginal tax bracket to one that is very low. Reagan was against this...and by default....was against the high-enders circumventing the tax laws as written.
  
  I didn't think this was the yes spin zone...I was apparently mistaken.
• dwccrew

  

  I Wear Pants;1024227 wrote:Like what the Republicans are having happen on the 1st?

  Sure. R's and D's do the same thing, they just choose to spend on different things.
  

  BoatShoes;1024759 wrote:At the beginning of the Bush Presidency Alan Greenspan testified before Congress saying, "the emerging key policy need is to address the implications of maintaining surpluses beyond the point at which publicly held debt is effectively eliminated." We were paying down what we owed and on our way to paying off our debt but Republicans decided it was time to slash revenue to ensure that we did not pay down what we owe.
  
  Thus, The Republicans used this fear that we would actually pay off our national debt to justify the Bush tax cuts which, as we can see, the Republicans will not give up despite being a huge culprit of our deficit situation. In fact, major spending programs on the other hand have been phased out. All of Obama's fiscal stimulus programs have been phased out. Your intuition that Congress just finds "new ways to spend tax money" is not really supported by recent events.

  Not sure why everyone is addressing me and mentioning what the R's are doing. Both parties do it, to think otherwise is to be blindly loyal to one's party. So you give me a quote from over 10 years ago and use that as recent events? Or are you saying because the stimulus (which was nearly 1 trillion$) has been phased out so that is a recent event? The stimulus was such a terrible idea in the first place. What good did it really do? The economy is still in the crapper.
  

  Footwedge;1025342 wrote:What do you have against Henry? He was a genius.

  I think what he is saying is Henry Ford paid those people well above what a minimum wage was at the time. Therefore, if everyone at that time would have been, at a minimum, what Ford's employees were, Ford's employees' buying power would have been diminished.
• BoatShoes

  fish82;1025199 wrote:1. As I state above...equating statements about random "loopholes" with raising marginal rates and "paying their fair share" is not only not in context as I requested...it's pretty disingenuous. That said, I knew that's exactly the tack you would take. So predictable.
  
  B. The "quote" you attribute to Reagan appears nowhere in your linked source. Try again.

  It is amazing the types of language games I have to play on this site. Notice I did not say Reagan definitely said "Pay their fair share" I said "nearly identical statements" about "fair share." He is clearly suggesting in those links that the tax being paid by higher income earners was not fair. I made no claim as to what the exact particular sentence was.
  
  Also, I never said that Reagan Raised Marginal Rates. Could he really even have done so? They started above 50% at the top bracket when he got into office and the was no major war or debt (at the time he started in office) to justify it. What I said was that he presided over rates that were much higher than what Obama does. When the Kemp-Roth Tax Act was passed in 1981 he had the opportunity to veto that bill if he thought those rates were to high. But no, he presided over them for 6 years of his presidency and then went on halfway through his presidency, as the links indicate, suggesting that even still, the distribution of the tax burden was not fair. He clearly says that the wealthy were still able to avoid paying "their fair share."
  
  The bottom line is this: Ronald Reagan was not a Robin Hood Socialist because he was comfortable with rates as high as 50%t hen and neither is Obama for being comfortable with rates at 39.6%. There is no way you would try to spin it if a Democrat cut taxes early in his term but only cut them down to 50%.
• BoatShoes

  fish82;1025241 wrote:As often as you cite this one example (your only one really) you never mention the obvious fix. Raise the short-term capital gains rate to 30%...poof...problem solved. No need to monkey with the marginal rates at all, right?
  
  Oh wait...that wouldn't accomplish what you people are really after, now would it?
  
  So easy.

  No it is not easy. Many Conservatives are more against raising the capital gains rate than ordinary income rates. In fact many conservative economists such as Robert Barro would like to see the capital gains rate go to zero. And furthermore, alterations between the short term capital gains rate and the long term capital gains rate create the exact kinds of market distortions that conservatives are against.
  
  I of course would like to see the top marginal rate slightly lowered and all capital gains rates raised to the same level just as was done in the tax reform act oof 1986 but that is impossible to achieve these days because, although it isn't talked about, conservatives desire lower capital gains rates more than they desire lower rates on labor income. Changing the short term gains rate would not change anything because investors could just sit on the unrealized gains. We know this would happen too just by looking at the way in which corporations will sit on offshore profits because of deferral. You'd have to raise rates on all capital gains so as to not create a distortion and if you did that every single conservative would blare the trumpet saying that the tax code is punishing investment, savings and productivity.
  
  As an example, The Paul Ryan plan for instance called for making the capital gains rate zero and effectively raising taxes on lower and middle income earners by eliminating popular deductions like the HMID. This is the Republican vision of the future because it effectively creates a consumption tax within our current tax income tax regime.
• BoatShoes

  dwccrew;1025355 wrote: Not sure why everyone is addressing me and mentioning what the R's are doing. Both parties do it, to think otherwise is to be blindly loyal to one's party. So you give me a quote from over 10 years ago and use that as recent events? Or are you saying because the stimulus (which was nearly 1 trillion$) has been phased out so that is a recent event? The stimulus was such a terrible idea in the first place. What good did it really do? The economy is still in the crapper.

  Well I was just pointing out that recent history indicates that tax cuts are more entrenched than spending and that even if you go back into the nineties when defense spending was cut and welfare was eliminated, spending has been cut from time to time. But, ever since Bush 41 raised taxes in violation of his "read my lips" statement it has been much harder to get rid of budget busting tax cuts. And of course, the stimulus was a great idea but it was very poorly designed. The CBO and other experts believe that unemployment would have been higher and GDP lower had it not been passed.
  
  Additionally, several people were saying that it was not large enough and not well designed (including Martin Feldstein) and thus, when it didn't bring unemployment down enough, Republicans of course would say that it was a miserable failure when if we had listened to conservatives things would have been even worse such as; Ireland which was a good soldier and under went massive austerity and still has nearly double an unemployment rate that we have.
• BoatShoes

  fish82;1025241 wrote:As often as you cite this one example (your only one really) you never mention the obvious fix. Raise the short-term capital gains rate to 30%...poof...problem solved. No need to monkey with the marginal rates at all, right?
  
  Oh wait...that wouldn't accomplish what you people are really after, now would it?
  
  So easy.

  And either way, one other potential might be to propose an alternative minimum tax for millionaires...which is just what Obama proposed with his "Warren Buffet rule"...
• BoatShoes

  fish82;1025196 wrote:Where's the beatdown again? You guys are honestly equating random comments about "closing loopholes" to raising marginal tax rates? Good one, bro...keep it up!! :rolleyes:
  
  Oh, and the quote he attributes to Reagan appears nowhere in the link he provided.
  
  You were saying? Fish is still standing, wedgie....as usual.

  I never attributed a quote to Reagan. I said he made similar statements about higher income earners not paying their fair share. Both Ronald and Bammy say rich people weren't paying their fair share. I've watched the video a couple of times and cannot see how you can say that they were both not making similar claims. Heck both of the men even cite a similar example of a higher income earner's secretary having a higher rate and it not being fair.
• fish82

  

  Footwedge;1025352 wrote:I think Reagan's inference is pretty effin clear. Certain millionaires have the capability to reduce their marginal tax bracket to one that is very low. Reagan was against this...and by default....was against the high-enders circumventing the tax laws as written.
  
  I didn't think this was the yes spin zone...I was apparently mistaken.

  I never said that wasn't his meaning...just that it's a completely different thing than the catch-all "rich don't pay their fair share." So if you want to go on the "spin zone" kick...talk to Boatshoes....not moi.
• fish82

  

  BoatShoes;1025443 wrote:And either way, one other potential might be to propose an alternative minimum tax for millionaires...which is just what Obama proposed with his "Warren Buffet rule"...

  You're showing your true colors again. What if the "millionaire" in question is a guy working a $150K job and is just good with his money? If your true beef is with the guys paying 15%, then raise the short term cap gains on everything over X dollars to 30% and be done with it. Those evil rich guys are paying their "fair share," and the guy making $250k at a regular job or small business doesn't get hosed. If that really is your intention and you have no other agenda, then that's the only answer. Right?
• BoatShoes

  fish82;1025462 wrote:You're showing your true colors again. What if the "millionaire" in question is a guy working a $150K job and is just good with his money? If your true beef is with the guys paying 15%, then raise the short term cap gains on everything over X dollars to 30% and be done with it. Those evil rich guys are paying their "fair share," and the guy making $250k at a regular job or small business doesn't get hosed. If that really is your intention and you have no other agenda, then that's the only answer. Right?

  Short term capital gains are already taxed at 35% for short term gains > $372,951 but it's already easy to defer that gain so it's taxed at 15%. You only have to defer it for a year. I'm not arguing in this thread what needs to be done to garner more revenue from high earners but that would not do it. Your solution of raising the short term rate is no good because that is already the law
  
  I don't have some "true colors" or hidden agenda to siphon money away from people earning 250k in ordinary income. All I was saying is that Conservative demi-gods have wanted to tax those people at a higher rate than Barack Obama adjusting for inflation so maybe it wouldn't be as inherently evil as some might suggest. What I wasn't saying is that raising the ordinary rate to 39.6 would make people "pay their fair share." I was not saying as a normative matter, we ought to tax ordinary income earners at a higher rate.
  
  You say that a person making 250k in ordinary income would be "getting hosed" if his rate were 39.6%. Well Ronald Reagan clearly didn't think so or he would've vetoed the Kemp-Roth Tax Cuts which taxed those people, adjusted for inflation at 50%. Maybe both Reagan and Obama wanted to hose ordinary income earners but if Reagan didn't then Obama certainly doesn't. As a matter of policy I'd rather not raise the top marginal rate for high ordinary income earners but I wouldn't go so far as to say they'd be getting "hosed" if their rate were to raise to 39.6%. And that's what I was commenting on in this thread, this idea that raising that rate 4.6% would be the end of the world.
  
  But even if you wanted to make rich people pay more...just raising the short term capital gains rate would not be the magic bullet that you think it would be. We know this of course because the current short term rate is already what you think it would need to be.
  
  The Obama idea of a "Warren Buffet Rule" would be to ensure that a person with AGI over a million for a taxable year would pay the top marginal rate regardless of whether they earned their income from dividends, long term capital gains, ordinary income, interest from state and local bonds etc. I'm not saying this is the greatest idea but it certainly would work better at making the very wealthy pay more taxes than your idea of raising the short term capital gains rate (which is already at the rate you suggest) because the wealthy could not shift their income to avoid the tax...that being the point of the rule.
  
  But as to the short term capital gains and the paying their "fair share" thingy, you're sitting here arguing to raise capital gains rates. Gladly, I would trade raising the capital gains rates to match the top ordinary income rate and not raise the top ordinary income rate...just as was done in the tax reform act of 1986 but I'm a liberal and what was once conservative is now in the land of crazy socialism and impossible to achieve.
  
  What Republicans/Conservatives want to do is eliminate taxes on all capital gains and dividends and would tell you that you want to punish investment if you talk about raising capital gains rates at all. And, while they're at it they will eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction and raise taxes on the ordinary income earner.
• fish82

  

  BoatShoes;1028062 wrote:Short term capital gains are already taxed at 35% for short term gains > $372,951 but it's already easy to defer that gain so it's taxed at 15%. You only have to defer it for a year. I'm not arguing in this thread what needs to be done to garner more revenue from high earners but that would not do it. Your solution of raising the short term rate is no good because that is already the law
  
  I don't have some "true colors" or hidden agenda to siphon money away from people earning 250k in ordinary income. All I was saying is that Conservative demi-gods have wanted to tax those people at a higher rate than Barack Obama adjusting for inflation so maybe it wouldn't be as inherently evil as some might suggest. What I wasn't saying is that raising the ordinary rate to 39.6 would make people "pay their fair share." I was not saying as a normative matter, we ought to tax ordinary income earners at a higher rate.
  
  You say that a person making 250k in ordinary income would be "getting hosed" if his rate were 39.6%. Well Ronald Reagan clearly didn't think so or he would've vetoed the Kemp-Roth Tax Cuts which taxed those people, adjusted for inflation at 50%. Maybe both Reagan and Obama wanted to hose ordinary income earners but if Reagan didn't then Obama certainly doesn't. As a matter of policy I'd rather not raise the top marginal rate for high ordinary income earners but I wouldn't go so far as to say they'd be getting "hosed" if their rate were to raise to 39.6%. And that's what I was commenting on in this thread, this idea that raising that rate 4.6% would be the end of the world.
  
  But even if you wanted to make rich people pay more...just raising the short term capital gains rate would not be the magic bullet that you think it would be. We know this of course because the current short term rate is already what you think it would need to be.
  
  The Obama idea of a "Warren Buffet Rule" would be to ensure that a person with AGI over a million for a taxable year would pay the top marginal rate regardless of whether they earned their income from dividends, long term capital gains, ordinary income, interest from state and local bonds etc. I'm not saying this is the greatest idea but it certainly would work better at making the very wealthy pay more taxes than your idea of raising the short term capital gains rate (which is already at the rate you suggest) because the wealthy could not shift their income to avoid the tax...that being the point of the rule.
  
  But as to the short term capital gains and the paying their "fair share" thingy, you're sitting here arguing to raise capital gains rates. Gladly, I would trade raising the capital gains rates to match the top ordinary income rate and not raise the top ordinary income rate...just as was done in the tax reform act of 1986 but I'm a liberal and what was once conservative is now in the land of crazy socialism and impossible to achieve.
  
  What Republicans/Conservatives want to do is eliminate taxes on all capital gains and dividends and would tell you that you want to punish investment if you talk about raising capital gains rates at all. And, while they're at it they will eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction and raise taxes on the ordinary income earner.

  If only one or two brackets are getting their rates raised, then they're getting hosed...plain and simple. If you want Clinton-era rates, then let them all expire and deal with the fallout like big boys.
  
  As far as the 2000 guys making over a million and paying 15%, do whatever you want to them. Collect your paltry 60 billion/year and quit whining about them. It's getting tiresome.
• Devils Advocate

  

  You are missing the boat ... Boat.
  
  The tax rate is fine..... CUT SPENDING.
• BoatShoes

  Devils Advocate;1028197 wrote:You are missing the boat ... Boat.
  
  The tax rate is fine..... CUT SPENDING.

  Devils Advocate;1028197 wrote:You are missing the boat ... Boat.
  
  The tax rate is fine..... CUT SPENDING.

  Very Clever. But, we could cut the entire medicare/medicaid appropriations as an example and we would still have a budget deficit because we have millions of people who are not working and therefore a huge output gap and are bringing in only about 14% of GDP in taxes. European countries are proving for all to see that slashing government budgets in a depressed economy only makes budget and debt problems worse. At the very least we're going to have to get our revenue back up to 18% of GDP if not higher than the historical average as part of our budget problems.
  
  If you fired everyone in the department of defense and didn't even put them on unemployment...completely eliminating all defense spending and just told them they were on their own, we would still have a budget deficit. Not to mention how bad it would be in real life when they all would go on unemployment and be unable to find a private sector job because of depressed demand for contracts, goods, services, etc.
  
  Good luck.
• BoatShoes

  fish82;1028180 wrote:If only one or two brackets are getting their rates raised, then they're getting hosed...plain and simple. If you want Clinton-era rates, then let them all expire and deal with the fallout like big boys.

  You framing this thread as whining is off base. The author of the article I posted put forth an argument as to why allowing the consolidation of wealth into the hands of very few is bad for the overall growth of the economy because, despite getting more income, these individuals don't put the income to use in a way that generates economic growth. And, since 1980, as income inequality started to rise, even the boom times did not match the economic growth of the post-war boom when wealth was not as divergent.
• QuakerOats

  BS (BoatShoes) and all:
  
  Here are the numbers (again):
  
  In Bush's first 4 years the average receipts were $1.88 trillion, and the average outlays were $2.08 trillion -- very nearly in balance.
  
  In Obama's first 4 years the average receipts will be $2.27 trillion, and the average outlays will be a staggering $3.63 trillion.
  
  Thus revenues will have increased by 21% over 8 years - not bad at all, especially given low inflation.
  
  However, SPENDING will have increased by an absolutely astounding 74%, and with no end in sight (which is equally as incredible).
  
  http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/hist01z1.xls
  
  In the face of these FACTS, there simply cannot be any reasonable argument whatsoever that we have a tax revenue problem; that is simply a lie. What the numbers clearly demonstrate is an absolute explosion in federal spending of unparalleled proportion! There is no debating the numbers or the obvious conclusion.
  
  Furthermore, the oft heard argument made by you and others always relates to revenues as a percent of GDP instead of focusing on the absolute numbers. This is a false argument; it presupposes that government is somehow entitled to grow in proportion to the GDP --- poppycock! Government should be more of a fixed cost (drain) and it should not grow and expect to be funded by some predisposed percentage of GDP. Frankly, the economy can grow on its own (if we reduce government interference) and as a result the size of government will shrink in relation thereto, and thus the revenues necessary to fund government, as a percent of GDP, will shrink by default. Hell, that should be our goal -- get government and tax revenues to 10% of GDP; you would see an explosion in growth, which in turn would throw off enough revenues to not only balance budgets but pay down the debt.
  
  Instead, many would rather continue to grow government at a staggering pace which will only result in the stifling of growth and innovation, at which point there will be no way out.
  
  
  Happy New Year.
• QuakerOats

  ttt