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

To: tejek who wrote (616622)	6/20/2011 2:57:19 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1584050

Are Republicans losing their grip on reality? Hopefully they don't join the Democrats. where magical thinking trumps rationality Like the Democrats, with there belief that government spending can restore prosperity, their neo-luddite idea that ATMs and other labor saving or productivity improving devices result in having lower employment. There beleif that paying people more so they can buy their companies own product works as a way to build a corporation (see adamsmith.org and Message 27092445 ) Foremost among these is the claim that it is possible to balance the federal budget without raising taxes. Politically it may not be. Some element of tax increase might be needed to get any agreement on entitlement reform. But fiscally its quite easy. Just restrain the growth of government, and you don't need any actual cuts, or any tax increases to balance the budget, just economic growth and time. The problem is that almost every Democrat, and many Republicans support the growth of government. There is some partisan difference but its more a politician thing, then a party thing. Bigger government gives more control to the politicians, and means they don't have to make the unpopular decision to tell a bunch of people no. The long-range forecasts in the Paul Ryan plan, which show spending falling to 3 percent of GDP They show no such thing. Perhaps "falling 3 percent", but certainly not "falling to 3 percent" (which would be a drop of over 20 percent of GDP, and a cut in spending to something like an eighth of what it is now if it was done all at once). The fantasy here is that spending at today's level as a percent of GDP is affordable. With the exception of for a couple of years during WWII (when the private part of the GDP was held down by government rationing) the US federal government has never been able to raise that much revenue as a percentage of GDP. Not with 95% marginal rates for the top bracket, not with 28% marginal rates, and not with anything in between. Thinking that income tax increases on "the top 1 percent" or on "the rich" or even on everyone, can play more than a small role in the effort to deal with the fiscal problem that the country faces is a great example of "denying reality".