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

To: RetiredNow who wrote (530167)	11/18/2009 2:51:16 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1574098

parse One entry found. Main Entry: 1parse Pronunciation: \'pärs, chiefly British 'pärzFunction: verb Inflected Form(s): parsed; pars·ing Etymology: Latin pars orationis part of speech Date: circa 1553 transitive verb 1 a : to resolve (as a sentence) into component parts of speech and describe them grammatically b : to describe grammatically by stating the part of speech and explaining the inflection and syntactical relationships 2 : to examine in a minute way : analyze critically <having trouble parsing…explanations for dwindling market shares — R. S. Anson> merriam-webster.com The first definition doesn't apply. The 2nd doesn't apply well. I'm examining and analyzing, but not in a minute way. (This post might be parsing, but the one you replied to was not.) Taxing simply isn't spending, its a whole different category. Also tax changes affect the deficit less than the percentage change in the tax. Raise tax rates by 10% and you get less than a 10% increase in revenue, cut by 10% and you get less than a 10% reduction in revenue. All else being equal the lower taxes are the lower dead weight loss from taxation you get. In extreme cases (very high or particularly perverse taxes, or just moderately high taxes on investment, esp. when you compete for investment with other countries) tax increases can reduce revenue, and tax cuts can increase it. Real fiscal discipline is more about controlling spending. This isn't a partisan point Bush didn't control spending just as Obama is not doing so. Increasing taxes to cover vast spending increases isn't showing discipline, but rather having the government gobble up more and more of the economy. The main issue is spending. Whether government taxes away money or borrows it, its pulling it from the private sector in to the government. Borrowing has the advantage that at least in less than extreme amounts its less distortive than our tax system. But when debt to extreme levels it lowers confidence, and puts pressure on future taxes to pay back all the interest. There is almost never an excuse for running deficits. How long would you or I survive if we ran continual deficits like our gov't does? It's a freaking joke. Deficits that increase the debt at a slower rate than the long term growth of the economy, and when the debt isn't already too massive compared to the economy, aren't so problematic. Then again those aren't the types of deficits we are facing now, so the point might not be considered very relevant to our current situation.