Quote:
Originally Posted by RichieLion
I think it's easy to postulate that only by raising taxes and tax rates, can you raise the amount of money needed.
It's an opinion, but is it "common sense"?
There are those who disagree with your deduction, and point to myriad spending cuts, coupled with tax cuts (OMG) to spur the business growth needed to produce the needed taxes.
Even ignoring me you don't have a solid consensus, and your condescending tone doesn't impress me a whit,
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At least read what I wrote, will you Richie?
What I said was that in order to balance the federal budget virtually the entire federal government, every department and every employee, would have to be eliminated, shut down, every single person drawing a federal paycheck terminated. Even then taxes would have to be increased just to fund defense, the legally required entitlements, and interest on the national debt.
You keep saying the arithmetic is "unsubstantiated", "opinion", "claptrap". The fact is I do have a consensus. No one who has ever actually put pencil to paper has ever asserted, like you, that there's any possible way to "spur business growth" sufficient to balance he budget. Go ahead, Richie, give us all the name of one person, just one, who asserts that some combination of tax and spending cuts will actually balance the federal budget?
Wait, I know your answer. You're going to tell us that the Paul Ryan budget accomplishes what you say. But it dosen't...not even close. It's a decent start, but people like you listen to the sound bites but never bother to do the arithmetic don't realize that even the Ryan budget produces a sizable deficit each year and grows the national debt at an unsustainable rate. So if you're planning on citing the Ryan budget proposal as the answer, better find someone else. Ryan's numbers don't produce what you think they do.
Do a little more arithmetic, will you Richie. Figure out how many years and at what growth rate of the economy would it take to "spur business growth and tax revenues" sufficient to balance the budget if we kept tax rates at the "Bush tax cut" levels?
Let me give you the answer, as calculated by the Government Accounting Office.
If tax rates and spending were maintained at 2011 levels, the economy would have to grow at a 10% yearly rate for 50 years in order to produce a balanced federal budget.
Want to know the last time our economy grew at a 10% year-to-year rate? Never. Not even once.
And yes, I will ignore you, Richie...either because you're so ideologically stubborn as to refuse to recognize what the arithmetic makes so obvious....or because you're simply delusional.