This is all the government should be responsible for (taken from the Libertarian Party of Canada website)

The only proper functions of government, whose powers must be constitutionally limited are as follows: settling, according to objective laws, disputes among individuals, where private, voluntary arbitration has failed; providing protection from criminals; providing protection from foreign invaders.

That's it. Every other social program needs to go, taxes need to be eliminated and private business needs to flourish.

You understand what the austerity in Europe is, right?  It is not your American version argued for, where it is an attempt to shrink the government into the size of a bathtub so you can drown it, by engaging in tax cuts and budget cuts.  In Europe, programs of austerity mean you not only get budget cuts, BUT you also get tax increases.

I have yet to see anyone in the American political realm, posting on forums like this, who would dare advocate that.  So, are you the first to go on record to say you support both tax increases and budget cuts as a solution an country's economic woes?

I've said that on these forums before.  Though the budget cuts need to be the bulk, and the tax increases should show shared sacrifice.  It's bad policy to raise or cut taxes for any indivdual group of people. 

The "broadening the base" that's often talked about but never proposed because it's political suicide.

Personally what i'd like to see is something like 5 to 3 to 2 cuts.

That is for every $5 of Republican picked cuts, there are $3 worth of Democratic cuts and $2 worth of tax increases.

That's really the annoying part of the whole debate.  Democrats have shit they want to cut, they just for whatever reason aren't saying "hey lets cut this stuff."  Likely due to purely political motivations.

There are 3 reasons for this:

1) Many Democrats, including the President, simply do not believe/understand the financial crisis. If you're a suscribed Keynesian, which most politicians (on both sides of the isle) are, then, really, there is no argument for cuts.

2) Democrats, like all politicians, have one priority: getting re-elected, this usurps all other responsibilities. While Republicans, for the most part, are elected by those who favour smaller Government (although Republicans don't deliever on this promise, most voters don't look past the rhetoric), Democrats are not. This means that some Republicans will vote for cuts that they do not believe in (as pointed out in number 1), and some Democrats will vote against cuts that they do believe it.

3) Democrats and Republicans need to keep up an image of being different parties. They're not - on 90% of the policies, including all the most important, they are fundamentally the same . So they need to blow up that remaining 10% of difference to almost cartoonish levels. This means that the Republicans are the party of "cuts" (reducing the level of increase in the future...), and the Democrats are the party of "tax" (and with every new dollar collected in tax, a new loophole or subsidy put in...) - and they absolutely, 100%, can not stray from those positions.

I'm aware that you're probably away of these points, this post is more of a PSA, than anything else.

Yeah, most polticians are Keynsians because it's easier to lie and pretend what you did to the economy helped, then it is to explain why you did nothing while the economy slowly recovered on it's own.

Though, while Democrats are generally pro big government most Democrats would be jumping for joy at Defense Department cuts.

Euro-peon

I like it, intentional or not. Personally I call them euro-prawns after watching District 9.

Kasz, you clearly haven't heard of the printing press and it's modern, digital 'add a zero' equivalent. This allows us to fix every problem man has ever conceived.

How about you stop talking about the real world and me and you write a cheque to each other for $1,000,000,000 and become billionairres? $5 fee for the privililage.

The PIIGS should default and print their own money and the rest of the world should just accept that it's as good as gold. Then everything will work out just fine.

Tax evasion has plagued Europe and added to the debt problem. Corporation, individuals, Trusts have dodged paying their tax bills. Tax compliance is not enforced by the government on the wealthy. The bottom 90% of society must pay the bulk of the tax bill or incur pension cuts to make interest payments on the debt.

Oh boy... and now some Greeks have petitioned the Hague to try it's government for "Peacetime Genocide."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17811153

If it weren't for the fact tons more people would die, i'd like to see them get their wish and see what things are like without the "Genocide of only spending 120% or so of what you can pay for."

The courts take much longer to decide things than the EPA does, and that would be often-irreversible environmental damage that occurred in the meantime, and the other question is: who sues, or for what? Some things are bad for the environment but not lawsuit worthy since they don't do a particular amount of harm to any one person, or the harm is so diluted amongst a group of people that they don't care enough to fix the problem themselves. The free market does not control for pollution, except where the finding of more effecient methods of production just so happens to curb pollution in the process, in which case government pushes forward help companies in the long run

or... they could just "forget" all the debt.