Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (157677)	6/4/2003 10:41:45 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

GST, your twisted logic does not entitle you to speak for me, so why don't you drop all this "Bob says" and "Bob thinks" nonsense. You have never failed to misrepresent my views. Who the government borrows from is irrelevant. All that matters is that it is borrowing and must repay the debt eventually. But government deficits are not, as an absolute rule, a bad thing. They are useful at times when the economy is in need of stimulation. How many of you "tax cuts for the rich" chanters have opined that the government should be putting more money into the hands of average Americans so they could spend it to boost the economy? Well, where do you think that money comes from? It comes either immediately from other taxpayers pockets, directly reducing their ability to spend and obliterating any stimulative effects, or it comes from future taxpayers. Shifting it from one person to another now does nothing to stimulate the economy, only borrowing it from investors against the payments of future taxpayers can do that. Deficits can also be justified when a sudden surge in spending comes about as a result of unforeseen or uncontrollable events like 9/11, especially when such events hit at a time when tax revenues are already plummeting as a result of a market collapse and recession, and the events themselves cause further erosion in the economy and tax revenues. If you jack up taxes to cover the revenue shortfalls (vs. the optimistic projections used to justify letting spending grow at twice the rate of inflation when times were good) AND the emergency spending, you are sure to drive the economy further into a hole. Deficit spending in this case allows the government to spread out the tax burden to future periods when taxpayers are better able to absorb it. Now, if you want to argue that the government should NEVER borrow against the future, you are entitled to that opinion, but you'd find relatively few people who would agree with you. As for the "dumping the burden on our children and grandchildren" mantra, it's only been a few years since all the experts were saying we could never dig ourselves out of the hole were were in as far as spiraling government debt. Yet the booming economy (and, particularly, booming markets) led to an unanticipated windfall of tax revenues for the government and debt began to fall. Next thing you know the government is projecting those boom times indefinitely out into the future and assuming the windfall in revenues would wipe out the government debt in a relative few years while the pols patted themselves on the back for all their new spending plans, growing the budget at twice the inflation rate at a time when fewer and fewer people were unemployed or poor and in need of support from the government. Amazing what a recession, a serious bear market and three thousand dead office workers can do to bring about a mood swing among government forecasters, isn't it? The best way to fix the deficit (again) is to get the economy going and, when tax revenues start flowing in faster again as a result, control spending.