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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (26396)	2/25/2008 2:27:39 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

1) Government tax take still can't rise above 100% of national product! But the GDP will be much larger. 200 years from now it will likely be much higher than a quadrillion (nominal) dollars. 2) Laffer Curve effects also apply --- rising government tax take out of the real economy REDUCES productivity of society and the national production of the economy. So, as tax-take rises toward '100% of production', the economic drops off to zero or NEGATIVE RATES as capital flees. Thus: the economy is no longer 'growing' (as those conditions approach) as you posited. Thats true, but none of my calculations require a cost per year for these programs that ever approaches 100% of GDP (still increase the cost for the federal government to say 40% of GDP and you still reduce economic growth. Re: "A quadrillion nominal dollars is likely...." WHEN? (You gave no timeline....) I gave a time line multiple times, including later in that very sentence. "...to be a small fraction of the total US GDP for the next 200 years." SOURCE? Me. Just protect current inflation and real economic growth outwards and you get figures much higher than a quadrillion dollars for GDP. Sure trends rarely continue forever, but the figures aren't just higher but much higher, and also I explicitly assumed no major disaster (with a definition of major so strict that Katrina, the San Francisco fire and Earthquake, and even WWII would be minor, major here means something like the US conquered, or balkanized, or Yellowstone erupting, or an asteroid hit, or a relatively near by gamma ray burst, basically something that ends the US, or at least pretty much eliminates significant future economic growth for the US)