Excerpt:
"Here we stand more than a year into a grave economic crisis with a projected budget deficit of 13% of GDP. That's more than twice the size of the next largest deficit since World War II. And this projected deficit is the culmination of a year when the federal government, at taxpayers' expense, acquired enormous stakes in the banking, auto, mortgage, health-care and insurance industries.
With the crisis, the ill-conceived government reactions, and the ensuing economic downturn, the unfunded liabilities of federal programs -- such as Social Security, civil-service and military pensions, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, Medicare and Medicaid -- are over the $100 trillion mark. With U.S. GDP and federal tax receipts at about $14 trillion and $2.4 trillion respectively, such a debt all but guarantees higher interest rates, massive tax increases, and partial default on government promises.
But as bad as the fiscal picture is, panic-driven monetary policies portend to have even more dire consequences. We can expect rapidly rising prices and much, much higher interest rates over the next four or five years, and a concomitant deleterious impact on output and employment not unlike the late 1970s."
And yet incredibly, we have pushback and distortion from the most reliable of "progressive" sources, the New York Times, who posts an opinion piece that incredibly tries to tell us it's not so bad, really, and it's mostly Bush's fault anyway.
The data cited does not establish the premise the author puts forth. and, as we've seen by the information provided above by Laffer, the Times piece is incredibly myopic in its ignoring of the other factors.
Remember, when you read something like "the tax cuts cost money", as is seen in the Times piece, you know what the worldview agenda mindset is.......a gross manipulation of economic realities.
Perhaps just a quibble on my part, but I prefer to think of inflation as a disguised tax. We certainly experience it and are fully aware of it but may fail to recognize it for what it is.
ReplyDelete"We certainly experience it and are fully aware of it but may fail to recognize it for what it is."
ReplyDeleteExactly.
It's up to those of us who understand these things to make sure it becomes widespread public knowledge.
"It's up to those of us.."
ReplyDeletelast week it was :"It's not my job to inform you."
amusing.
--brandonB
"It's not my job to inform you."
ReplyDeleteIt's still not my job.
You haven't figured it out yet, have you, brandibee?
Here's a hint:
The perpetually confused and immature souls who don't understand the learning and understanding process , like you and Raw Raw, are probably not worth the time and effort to set straight.
Hopefully, you'll figure these things out yourself by the assimilation quality of the life experiences you will accumulate.
I know that's a stretch of an assumption, given what I've seen of the two mentioned above so far, but I always try to be optimistic about these things.
"are probably not worth the time and effort to set straight"
ReplyDelete--So, you're not here to educate and inform. You're not here to lead by example. What is the purpose of this blog? I am only here to learn. I'll try my best to stay away, but it's hard when I know the info you post will challenge me to think outside of my own little box. But, since this isn't the place for that, I'll try really hard not to bother the great thinkers with such obscene and vulgar questions like "why?".
--brandonB
Fer Pete's sake, brandonB, go play in your room and let the adults talk for a while, mmm-kay?
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you try to find some blogs that are more on your experience/intelligence/age level? It's a real pain having to explain every damn thing about the real world to you over and over and over again.