combjelly,
Umm, we have even bigger deficits without a Keynesian economic policy. So it isn't strictly a Keynesian phenomena.
I am sure you know the reason for that. In case you don't, back in the 50s and 60s just about the entire budget (outside of interest payments). The Democrats invented the concept of and entitlement, which is a formula, on which the Congress doesn't even vote as far as the amount.
So the Democrats locked this country on a spending trajectory, growing at rate that is much faster than the growth of the economy. The gap between the exponents of exponential series will at first be insignificant, starting from a small base, but eventually will rear its ugly head, which is what we have been living through from 70s.
You can increase taxes, cut discretionary spending, but nothing will help, until the entitlement formulas are changed.
So on one hand we have had massive cuts in mainly military and also discretionary programs, that let us get away sitting idle while the entitlements grew out of control, but we won't be any longer once boomers start retiring in large numbers.
Anyway, nobody even pretends now that deficits are there as a tool to stimulate demand, work to tame the business cycle. It is now just purely lack of political will to balance the budget. And I am not even talking about the unfunded liability that is growing with those formulas that is yet to bite us.
Talk about academic arguments. People in any of the 70% bracket over history didn't get paid by the hour for the most part. And those sort of incomes tended to have a large number of tax breaks associated with them. So, by the time you got up to anywhere close to actually paying 70%, you were well out of the range of middle class.
I think you have this idea of idle rich. But they don't really care about income taxes that much. They don't need income. It's the people trying to get rich need a lot of income to accumulate wealth.
And to earn a lot of income, you have put some serious effort into it. And there are no guarantees.
So issues of whether or not the wife should work were just non-operative.
Why would that be? Are tehre not plenty of 2 carrier proffessional couples? There are a plenty of them in NYC.
So income inequality, along with all its negative social impact, is a good thing? You truly believe this?
I don't obsess over wealth of people relative to one another. I just root for all to move ahead in absolute terms. Inevitably, some faster than others.
Joe |
