So, I was watching Fox News for a few minutes on the Tea Party protests around the US today, since its April 15th which is the end of tax day for all Americans.

At any rate, there were some counter-protests about the tax cuts that have been given to people by the Obama administration.

I got to thinking about it today:

How can one consider something a tax cut - be it George W. Bush's tax cut of 2003, or this new Obama tax cut, when neither one is paid out by the surplus of government treasury?

Due to the deficits we are running, any sort of cut that is given today will invariably need to be repaid later - with interest.

So wouldn't that make these tax cuts forced loans? Something that was enacted by the British monarchs in 1626 and repealed in 1628?

Maybe I'm crazy for thinking that, but taking money from someone else in the form of a loan, to give to someone else seems really, really odd.

This would be true, if the pie that taxes come from was always the same size.

The more money you allow the people to keep, the larger the economy becomes, and the more total dollars you collect at a lower rate.

As the taxes for the rich lower, the revenue for the government has gone up.

Very true, but at the same time, spending goes up, which would mean that the demand for repayment will increase, and given our history, it will usually outstrip the economic growth.

Even with Reagen's tax cuts, the GDP growth wasn't enough to pay for all the policies between himself, Bush Sr. and Clinton.

Well, yea, but I don't see things in the same way I guess.

I think there is tax collecting, and there is spending. One has nothing to do with the other.

When collecting taxes, how much you take from each citizen should not take into account what the taxes are spent on. We take a % from each person based on whatever we think is "right".

47% of the people paying nothing, with 20-30% of those people making money, seems where we have landed at the moment, and not sure that's "right", but I don't see anyone stepping up to fix it.

Spending should be solely based on what the constitution allows government to spend money on (far less then we spend it on today).

Anyway, that's how I look at it, right or wrong. :)

I think we should run budget defeceits when we're in a recession.

Akvod -

The problem is that even *if* you agree with that logic (and I don't. Grover Cleveland and many other presidents before him dealt with recessions without deficits), it still assumes that when out of the recession, your paying off the deficit. We haven't paid off the deficit since we started down this dark road in the 70's.

We should run surpluses during economic expansions. We should do this by lowering Government Spending, and raising taxes.

We should run defeceits during economic recessions. We should do this by raising Government Spending, and lowering taxes.

Government spending should be used as a last resort, during a severe economic recession. The primary tool should be monetary policy.

That's where it falls apart, all right. Countercyclical budgeting is a great idea, but organizations—both corporate and government—have a hard time keeping their financial goals long-term. Everybody loves government spending when times are tough, but when times are good and they see a surplus, they want tax cuts rather than repayment.

It is possible to have a government that will say no, and actually slay the deficit and start repaying debt, but there's a huge amount of political pressure not to do so. I mean who wouldn't want to have a credit card that you can make your kids pay off?

I mean, that's what we have to deal with a popular government =/ It's a trade off between democracy and political insularity.

Contrary to popular statements, America isn't a democracy. Since we're a federal republic, we should have enough of a balance between state and federal powers to ensure some of this foolishness doesn't happen.