If past performance is predictive, Romney’s Admin would be even more the creature of the moneyed interests than W’s was. That would not be good for anybody else and certainly not for the economy as a whole.
Cite?
Just kidding. The deficit is a symptom of a spending problem, plus poor economic growth. Economic growth will fix part of the problem, but not all of it. We also have a serious spending problem.
Normally, spending is about 21% of GDP. Revenues are normally around 18% of GDP. Right now spending is 25%, revenues are 15%. A return to normal economic growth and employment would get us back to 18% without any further policy actions. Now how do we get spending back to 21%?
Was that a big problem in Massachusetts? Or is that an assumption based on his associations and his political party?
I’ve delved pretty deeply into his economic performance as governor of Massachusetts, but I know little about his decisionmaking process. So if Romney was especially beholden to moneyed interests while serving as governor, I’m open to hearing that case.
Only in high school economics. In the real world, we have to look at barriers to entry. How successful do you think New Car Company X is going to be with no dealer network?
Put another way, everyone would agree that the Big Three has been turning out shitty products for decades, right? So how come we don’t have a half-dozen new American automakers? How come we don’t have any?
A lot of the cars of the future are being made by smaller companies. One of the problems could be the excessive coziness of the Big Three with the government. I actually wonder if a competitor would even be allowed to bring an electric car to market that would actually compete with the Big Three.
Look what happened to Tucker.
Did you completely ignore the OP? I count 6.5* positives vs 1 negative, for a success rate of a whopping 81%. Do you dispute any of these?
*inflation is dead, but treasuries yield is low
Better than “how?” you should ask “why?”. But, the “how” is obvious: If GDP increases – which your scenario assumes – and spending holds steady, then spending as percentage of GDP decreases.
Spending doesn’t hold steady under the President’s budget plan. At minimum, it keeps up with growth. Revenues are expected to return to historical levels by 2020, even without rescinding some of the Bush tax cuts. Spending, however, is projected to remain at a historically high 23-24%. That’s unacceptable.
Why? Other industrialized democracies spend much more. The results are worth copying here.
They spend more, they also tax more, and the bulk of that burden falls on the middle class. If the public wants European levels of taxation and spending, that’s fine, but the Democrats need to advocate for that, not just tax the rich more and run a huge deficit. Either the middle class must be taxed a lot more than they are now, and even more still than what they were before the Bush tax cuts, or spending must drop dramatically.
if we want to spend like Europe, we’ll need a VAT and higher social insurance taxes.
Cite?
What?
France’s VAT is 19.6%. Sweden’s is 25%.
France’s income tax rate on income of 26,000 Euros to 70,000 Euros is 30%.
France’s gas tax is between 44 and 61 cents: per liter, not gallon.
Tax rates vary, but most European governments are funded primarily by VATs, social insurance taxes, and steep middle class tax rates.
Did you honestly think that the European style welfare states were funded mainly on the backs of the rich? You need me here to fight ignorance, apparently. That’s not the type of claim that should require a cite.
Is that supposed to answer the question you were asked? This doesn’t support your assertion as to where the burden falls. Can you provide that information, since you feel your job is to fight ignorance here?
It’s unacceptable because that is what it is. If it were acceptable, someone would have to get credit for it, and that someone would be Obama.
If you do not think that those taxes primarily burden the middle class, then I’d love to know how you figure that.
If you do think that those taxes primarily burden the middle class, then I would like to have a cite showing how you figure that.
Cite: the middle class tax rate is 30%.
Cite: The VAT is almost 20%
Cite: The gas tax is 44 to 60 cents per liter.
Okay, those are taxes on the rich. Let’s do the same thing here and say they are taxes on the rich.
Sigh, sometimes I wonder why some things have to be spelled out when they are obvious:
This pattern illustrates a general point made by Lindert(2004); countries in which government spending is a fairly high share of GDP have always relied on a mix of taxes that create relatively low distortion, with less progressivity, large exemptions for capital income, and so on. Meanwhile, Anglo-Saxon countries in which government spending is a relatively low share of GDP have historically relied on more progressive taxes.
Conclusion(adaher’s words): progressive taxation requires low spending. High spending can only be supported by the broadest tax base possible.
There are charts too, comparing France’s tax burdens to ours. The average Frenchman in the bottom 90% pays twice as much in taxes as the average American. The top 1% of Frenchmen pay about 50%, the top 1% of Americans pay 34%.
Yes. I can see you have a problem with doing that, because I’ve asked you for cites in other threads and haven’t gotten any.
I asked for cites for the info in your previous post. I don’t know why you linking to this. I’m not saying you’re wrong or your information is incorrect, I just don’t know where it’s coming from.
What gets me is that you guys have gotten too used to only hearing liberal viewpoints. So liberals can make statements of fact unchallenged, some of which are frankly laughable, and even the most obvious conservative claims demand cites, as if you’ve never heard them before. That is not exactly something I’d expect on the message forum of a site dedicated to fighting ignorance. Overtly political forums aren’t as biased towards one side of the spectrum as this one is.