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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (746980)	8/4/2006 1:25:48 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Re: "...Interest has to be paid on the debt, and that money needs to be taxed or borrowed. The additional taxation or borrowing is what lowers economic growth." You left out the one option politicians of all ages seem to prefer over all the others (possibly because they never have to record a vote for 'higher taxes'): INFLATE the HELL out of the currency... so that debts are 'repaid' in devalued paper. (Now tell me what THAT does to the growth prospects of a country.... I'd recommend a quick glance at later-day Imperial Rome... the Weimar Republic... or recent decades in Argentina for insight.) Re: "The fact that its 10% rather than a negative percentage means the estimate is that economic growth has increased. If economic growth decreased because of the tax cuts than the loss would not be 90% it would be over 100%." But you are forgetting to include the effects of the extra DEBT. It has a real, quantifiable effect, just as the code changes do.... So, no... according to the Treasury study (& all the others) there is no '10% higher growth rate'... at least, not for long. After the extra debt begins to drag, then growth rates are lower then they would have been without any policy changes at all.... [The 'issue' is WHAT WORKS. What combination of policies produces the most cost/effective results.] Re: "If you are trying to figure out if tax cuts work than the issue is indeed the tax cuts themselves." Why would I do that? (this is not a term paper....) As a citizen I'm mostly concerned with WHAT DOES THE COMBINATION OF POLICIES produce? Are we going to be better off, or worse off? If one hand of the federal government gives me a dollar, while the other hand of the government takes two away... should I be pleased with that combination of government policies, or not? Rationality tells me: no, NOT pleased. Re: "Similarly its unreasonable you can't prove that "tax cuts without spending cuts hurt the economy", by finding that the economy might be hurt when spending increases massively." Eh? Debt is real. It's effects are real. (As with most things in life, there is no 'magic free lunch'.)