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Pastimes : Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: c.hinton who wrote (1458)	8/8/2008 5:35:11 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3816

tim please take into consideration that for the times the cost was huge. It was much smaller as a percentage of GDP than current entitlement programs are. Percentage of GDP adjusts for "for the times" rather well. Also the percentage of GDP for today's programs are growing. Also it was not open ended, so 1 - Arguably it wasn't an entitlement, and 2 - Measuring the percentage of GDP greatly underestimates the extent that today's entitlements are vastly more expensive. do you really think the idea of paying 7% as the top rate in 1915 was any less objectionable to those living then than it is for todays rich who paying what ever it is they happen to pay......if anything it was more objectionable!!! I wasn't talking about how objectionable anything was. To the extent that I'm going to start talking about how objectionable something is as a criteria, I care more about the thing itself, than the objection that's just from the shock of change. such taxes were unconstitutional The 16th amendment was ratified in 1913. So they where not unconstitutional (although they had been in recent memory at the time). Also there hasn't been any relevant amendment since then, if they where really unconstitutional then, than they would also be so now. ---- Backing up a step, I'm not saying this wasn't an important issue, or something that people didn't get upset at, or even, at least not in these posts, as something people shouldn't have gotten upset at. I'm only pointing out that today's entitlements are a much bigger deal. ---- Backing up several steps to get the conversation back on the original track - I'll edit the original statement. The part you disagreed with was not the point. Hoover's problem wasn't cutting entitlements (which arguably didn't exist at the time, and at most where far smaller by any measure than today's entitlements), or even cutting social spending (he greatly increased it). It wasn't unconnected to the budget deficit (taxes and tariffs where raised, and that was a big contributor), and the fed harshly contracted (after overboosting earlier), and the government started to regulate more and become more interventionist in negative ways. In any case entitlement reform doesn't have to be a crash program of major changes starting day one. "The sooner the better" is not "the more sudden and massive the better", in fact its close to the opposite in this context because the sooner entitlements are reformed the less sudden and drastic the changes have to be.