ShannonH
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This entire debate is the same major distraction that the US has had for decades, which is basically deliberating over an issue of implementation and pretending it's a moral stance.
Raising or lowering taxes can raise _or_ lower revenues. It could raise revenues short term, but decrease them in the long term. It could raise both, or lower both. The big problem, that someone else already stated, is that it's not just about taxes or spending, but both. The budget is ridiculously out of balance and as evidenced by the recent credit downgrade is just continuing to get worse. There's a lot of rhetoric but so few people are actually looking at the numbers.
So right now, the tax revenue/GDP is 27%; with the anticipated rise in spending due to the aging population and increased debt interest, this is looking like (according to the Obama administration) it could rise over 1.5x and hit ~43%. This is assuming the same economic growth we've seen in the past 10 years, which is probably too optimistic, so it could be even higher. What you're looking at is a tax/GDP even higher than France's; while this doesn't sound immediately shocking, consider that this is just to maintain the current level of government programs that exist in the US today, and that France absolutely dwarfs the US in their level/quality of social programs (although they are having spending problems of their own right now.)
The US needs to treat this seriously, but since you are in a constant election cycle all politics is focused on the next 2 years, so even 14 years is too long-term to hear any real solutions.
I brought this up in another thread, but before you start thinking that socialized medicine is expensive and the US has an open-market in medicine, you should know that the US spends more per-capita on healthcare than Canada does. This is a huge bureaucratic/economic/political/corruption issue, and not just something you can dump more money in to. Just watch a little daytime TV and see the number of ambulance-chasing lawyers advertising if you want a sense of just how much waste is there right now
Raising or lowering taxes can raise _or_ lower revenues. It could raise revenues short term, but decrease them in the long term. It could raise both, or lower both. The big problem, that someone else already stated, is that it's not just about taxes or spending, but both. The budget is ridiculously out of balance and as evidenced by the recent credit downgrade is just continuing to get worse. There's a lot of rhetoric but so few people are actually looking at the numbers.
So right now, the tax revenue/GDP is 27%; with the anticipated rise in spending due to the aging population and increased debt interest, this is looking like (according to the Obama administration) it could rise over 1.5x and hit ~43%. This is assuming the same economic growth we've seen in the past 10 years, which is probably too optimistic, so it could be even higher. What you're looking at is a tax/GDP even higher than France's; while this doesn't sound immediately shocking, consider that this is just to maintain the current level of government programs that exist in the US today, and that France absolutely dwarfs the US in their level/quality of social programs (although they are having spending problems of their own right now.)
The US needs to treat this seriously, but since you are in a constant election cycle all politics is focused on the next 2 years, so even 14 years is too long-term to hear any real solutions.
I brought this up in another thread, but before you start thinking that socialized medicine is expensive and the US has an open-market in medicine, you should know that the US spends more per-capita on healthcare than Canada does. This is a huge bureaucratic/economic/political/corruption issue, and not just something you can dump more money in to. Just watch a little daytime TV and see the number of ambulance-chasing lawyers advertising if you want a sense of just how much waste is there right now