<<"...tax increases for short periods can bring in immediate income without hurting the economy longterm!">>
Star,
Your response was not bad, upto the above quote. As a *practical* matter, short-term tax increases and spending programs are not an option. Graft and corruption tend to perpetuate and exacerbate (sp?) an already formidable tendency of sprending programs to attain a life of their own. Inertia, if you will, always acts to prevent a sober evaluation of its effects from ever restraining an out-of-control government bureaucracy.
Take, for example, the income tax, itself. Who, in his right mind, could have ever dreamed at the inception of this idiotic burden on the citizenry the magnitude of the economic harm it was destined to inflict? Who could have guessed that Uncle Sam would ever grow this fat and bloated?
Yes, during the last 17 years or so, perhaps government did reduce its rate of growth (from utterly absurd to merely excessive,) but the clear trend of the past 70 years is for ever-growing, ever more socialistic government. It is unfortunate, to say the least.
The economic ramifications of "tax and spend" (and both parties are guilty of it, if not quite equally,) are as unambiguously grave as they are obvious.
RB
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