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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (175744)	10/2/2003 5:11:47 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1579701

Actually, there are many economists who would not agree with your position. There is no definitive proof that tax cuts stimulate the economy. Just about everyone agrees that tax cuts stimulate the economy. Some think that you shouldn't try to stimulate the economy that way because the stimulus is unlikely to be of the right size and at the right time, other are so concerned about the deficits that they would forgo the stimulus to lower the deficit but its close to a universal belief among economists that tax cuts do stimulate the economy even among many that don't think it is a good idea to use them to stimulate the economy. The gov't doesn't tax enough. We have people sleeping on the streets and starving. We have certified, mentally insane people running around free. Our prisons are overpopulated and there is no money to build new ones. Due to a shortage of schools, schoolroom class sizes are the largest for a western country. Our built environment and social infrastructure are lacking on many counts when compared to Canada, Europe and Australia. 1 - Most government spending does nothing to address any of those things, esp. if you are talking about federal spending. 2 - The prisons are overpopulated because of the drug laws. We spend more on prisons then probably any country on the earth and more per capita then any other western democracy. We also imprison a larger % of our population then any other large democracy. I'm not calling for slashing prison spending and putting the criminals on the street but we have not been slacking off in this area. 3 - Classroom size has decreased without any noticeable improvement in teaching. And our average class size is not the largest of any industrial democracy. In any case school spending is mostly a state and local issue. 4 - "enviroment and social infrastructure are lacking on many counts whe compated to..." That's very vague. If we got in to some specific details we might have something to talk about. (But I suspect we would disagree about a lot of the details, and even some of the general principles.) 5 - The fact that a number of other countries spend even more on a per capita or % of GDP basis in some areas then we do is not evidence that we are under spending in those areas. 6 - There are other areas besides the areas you list were we could cut back. 7 - Even if it possibly could be useful for the government to spend more money in some areas that doesn't change the fact that the government takes too much from us. Yes some good would come from spending more, the government is unlikely to waste 100% of any spending increase. But their would also be harm done by spending more, and in any case grabbing more of our money just wouldn't be right. and running a short term deficit in bad economic times is actually not a bad thing. Its not a bad thing if you don't go out and purposely reduce your revenues at the same time. No business person would commit such folly. Most businesses don't grow by reducing their revenue stream, but the government reducing its tax burden does help the economy grow. Increasing taxes to try to erase a deficit brought on by an economic slowdown is likely to only deepen the economic slowdown. That's what they said about the country's deficits before Clinton. They also said that 6% unemployment was normal and unemployment could never get below that figure. They were wrong on both accounts. Structural deficits do not mean that they can't be gotten rid of, it just means that an economic upturn might not be enough to get rid of it. But your right that they where wrong about the deficits before Clinton. The fact that for most of a 20 year period we had decent growth did allow us to grow out of the deficits. Unfortunately the thought that growth would go on forever encouraged more spending and caused a deficit when the growth of the economy could no longer keep up with the deficit. Tim