as much and as reluctantly as i come to this conclusion, romney is correct in taking an incremental approach in reducing the size of gov't.....we didn't get to leviathan level overnight, it started with roosevelt and has gotten bigger and bigger over decades under both R & D administration, culminating (i hope!) with bush and now obama
austerity is already here for the majority of us, not too many people do i know who haven't had to reduce budgets, overall spending, dip earlier than anticipated into savings.... as they watched their 401k's and RE holdings get decimated by the FED and by gov't policy.....most of the 'stimulus' was directed toward municipalities and state governments and it allowed them to keep their workers on the payroll longer (this had a *minor* stimulative effect as these are people who weren't thrown into the unemployment lines SHORT term, and a what cost?)
i've been reading that larger numbers of gov't employees are taking early retirements because they know the current pension scheme is unsustainable, so you have increasing levels of attrition, so i think a combination of attrition, freezing new hires, some layoffs over time will put the country back on the right track...
all you need do is reverse the TREND of big government and start winding it down, but make no mistake, the unwind will be painful for millions of people
of course we haven't even scratched the surface with the benefit of dismantling the current regulatory regime, i would put that right up there with downsizing gov't spending as a means to get us back to a sustainable level of growth |
