Edmund Storms <stor...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: Sorry Jed, but your analysis conflicts with every economist that I have > read and I read many. >
Read Krugman. > Raising taxes back to Clayton is not possible because the economy is not > growing as fast as it was then so that the tax rate would have to be a > bigger fraction of the income to provide the same amount of money . . . > I said we should raise the rates back, and then wait for the economy to recover. I did not say we should raise total revenues back right away. > . . . which people resist. > People do like paying taxes, that's for sure. > Also, the debt is much larger now. We have passed the point of no return > according to most analysts. > Hey, I can do arithmetic. I am good with spreadsheets. Assuming the economy recovers, I can see that the debt will soon stabilize. As a percent of the GDP it has not risen much. It may soon start to fall even with the present tax rates. It is nothing to worry about. See: http://www.progressinaction.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/debt_gdp_dollars_percentage1.png Note the "percent of GPD." That's what matters. The actual dollar amount is unimportant. If the economy expands by a factor of ten and everyone's income goes up by a factor of 10, it would make no difference if the total national debt also increased by a factor of 10. We would be in the same place. That graph is from this article, which is partisan, but no one disputes that data, which is from the government as noted in the second graph: http://www.progressinaction.com/republicans/conservative-dishonesty-and-their-deficit-scare/ Seriously, I do not know which analysts you refer to but it seems they cannot do arithmetic. This is not rocket science. - Jed
