And while most Americans may generically say they support cutting spending, most are unwilling to cut spending for SS, Medicare, Medicaid, income support, the military, or other major programs you'd need to cut to get the deficit down. So where does that leave us?
It leaves us exactly where we are; too much government spending, not enough tax revenues, and almost no one willing to pay higher taxes...which all equates to $20 trillion in debt in about four years and forcing our excesses onto 'many' future generations to pay...quite pathetic! By my calculations, every single month the economy needs to create a minimum of 111,000 new jobs solely to keep up with population growth. We can assume from current ratios that over one-half of these new jobs won't pay much in federal income taxes...just some FICA. So the path is more people, making more demands on government, buy paying less federal taxes...not a good path...
Who knows? It is a common error to assume that the current trajectory will be continued in the future.
It's not an error...at all? We can assume anything we wish and explain the results of these assumptions. If we assume population growth, and larger government, and continued resistance to pay higher taxes...this is not a good path to be on...it is not sustainable. Something must change to show improvement 'if' these assumptions hold true. In this case we know what the path is today...so why assume it might be something different in the future? This nation must figure out how to gradually reduce per capita government spending, how to gradually increase per capita tax revenues, in order to find a more sustainable path...
A sustainable path is easily achievable once long term expectations of spending and paths to revenue to meet them are agreed through an abandonment of ideology for practical reality. This actually happened in the 1990s so it is not so far fetched an idea. Realistically though, I do not believe that any compromise is possible until the republicans lose their control of the House, which will happen sooner than later due to changes in demographics in Texas and Florida which will overwhelm their gerrymandering and the increasing rise of crackpot republican candidates in safe districts who can be defeated by any reasonable democratic challenger.
Nothing in life and government today is 'easily achievable'. All of our problems and their solutions definitely are not found in either political party...if you believe so then you are biased which is itself a problem in our society. You're drinking too much political Koolaid if you think either party is going to greatly increase taxes, greatly reduce government spending, and pay down a dime of debt in the next 8-10 years. The American public simply won't allow this to happen! We are going to remain self-serving and greedy all the way to our graves, not caring about deficits and debt, and happy to pass all of our debt to many future generations to deal with. IMO...the problems of the USA and government, including deficits and debt, SS, Medicare, military spending, etc. are much much larger than the political parties...
