That's a meaningless statement? Fact is this is not the right time to try to mitigate deficit spending! 'Right time' will not be decided by you. There will be a million inputs to decide if and when the 'right time' has come...
I have said for some time that federal income tax rates are too low. We cannot indefinitely consume more government than we are willing to pay for.
Fact is no one knows what the federal budget should be because there are not two people in the US who can ever agree on a single line item of the budget. As long as the US has no idea how much should actually be spent, the US cannot determine proper taxation or deal with deficit spending and debt...
What we are doing today has nothing to do with what we should actually be doing. IMO this nation should probably be spending $5-6 trillion/year, and maybe more, and aggregate Americans need to pay more taxes. But politics does not seem to allow much increased taxation, while at the same time politics easily ignores deficit spending. So...I suspect deficit spending will continue unimpeded until the **** truly hits the fan...
The question isn't really so much "Is this a good time?" but "Is this a better time relative to other times?" The economy has had a year to recover from the pandemic and that debt needs to start being paid down. I doubt there will be a much better time in the near future. People keep kicking the can down the road and imagine at some point the economy is going to take off in ways it is not now. Another problem is that changing course of government policy is not instantaneous. It might become "the right time" but the government is not going to immediately react. Changing tax policy is very political in nature, takes a lot of impetus and time. So the reality is that the country will have to plan more for the long term.
The only problem with that is Congress always spends more than it receives no matter how high the tax rates are.
Not a single government official, or voter, cares about deficit spending when they hear things like 'reduced spending' and/or 'increased taxation'. No one in Congress will mention the words! Reduced spending and increased taxes both come with severe ramifications. Lastly, as I've pointed out many times now, it is impossible to analyze spending and tax increases when NO ONE knows what the US budget should be!
Well, whatever it should be, there is good reason to believe that taxes should overall match spending levels most of the time.
Balls! said the Queen...if I had them I'd be King!! Should of...could of...if...are all meaningless when something proposed is impossible to implement. There needs to be a SURPLUS of net revenue, no matter what the spending might be, before deficit spending and/or debt can be reduced. How about analyzing the downside if the US had not done deficit spending since 2007? If the US did not do deficit spending during Covid? It bothers me that our government and it's citizens do not pay their way but I don't see this changing so why harp about it?
That's a very fatalist attitude. Just resign yourself to the inevitable, even though you know it will spell doom for the society in the long term. At the very least there is something to be said for a few individuals raising their voices to complain about it. And someday, in the distant future, when the society can finally look back and see the connection between cause and effect, they will at least know that those voices were there.
It's like complaining about how hot it is when there is nothing that can be done about it! I'm not a 'fatalist'...I'm a realist...
Something can be done about it, but it's unlikely the politicians or the voters will have the will to do anything about it, anytime soon.
Yes, they did. But amazingly the Democrats have found a way to spend even more. The budget deficits have only increased every year since Bush. (now up to Biden's first year in office) Trump was forced to sign on to the budget since Democrats had a majority in Congress. But it was more than that, and something illustrative. Trump was compelled to spend because there was an election coming up. To get those additional votes necessary to have a chance to win, he had to propose spending increases. What does this tell us? Apparently the majority of voters want spending increases even if it means deficits. Ultimately the voters have some blame for this.
Trump spent more than any other President has in 4 years... ever... that is just the facts - Trump is a Republican Trump controlled congress for 2 years, same as Obama, that is how Trump got his huge mega tax cuts for the corps
so why is the right complaining now, Trump has the record, the biggest increase to the debt in 4 years ever
'Can be done' is meaningless if you can't suggest the process to do something. Most of us understand the math; lower spending and/or increased revenue to provide a net reduction in deficit spending. When problem solving the solutions MUST allow for action or else they are meaningless comments and not truly solutions. Deficit spending is one of those problems which basically, at this time, and in the foreseeable future, that don't have practical solutions. And long before we can take action on deficit spending, the collective we will continue paying billion$ in service payments...which i think today is around $400 BILLION per year...100% wasted money...when will enough be enough--that's the $64,000 question!!
Deficit spending and debt IS NOT a Rep or Dem problem! The US government and the entire citizenry are equally responsible for the financial condition of the USA...
