richardhutnik said:
A debate regarding Occupy Wall Street has had an aspect of "if you want change, you need to get involved in the political process, and get people elected, like the Tea Party has done". Ok, well consider this:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/21/politics/super-committee/?hpt=ibu_c1
Looking at the Super Committee is going to fail at reaching a buget resolution. So, the question I have is: If Washington shows itself unable to be able to even agree to the most basic of requirements, like balancing a budget, how in the heck does getting involved in politics, to end up partisaning one party and pressuring it to go to a narrow band, and maybe getting a few candidates elected (like the Tea Party) going to change anything? If a nation can't even agree on doing basic things, how does adding even more partisanship to it and attempting to ramrod one's agenda through, going to change anything?
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Partisanship is the problem because partisans tend to protect special interest groups over the country as a whole ...
Countries that have been successful at reducing/eliminating their deficits have tended to do so by limiting the growth of government to a rate below inflation, or you could say cutting government spending in real terms. Those countries that have attempted to do it through tax increases have generally failed because the increase in revenue from a tax increase never meets projections because of the negative impact it has on GDP growth and, as Milton Freeman points out, governments will simply spend the extra revenue it received from tax increases and the deficit will be maintained.
A good demonstration of this is Canada ... In the 1980s the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney attempted to eliminate the deficit through the introduction of a national sales tax, the GST. The overall effect this had on the deficit was not particularly significant. Being that Canada has a socialist party (the NDP) that (generally) represents the Union vote, the Liberals in the 1990s were able to restrain spending which (in part due to the increased growth from NAFTA) allowed them to eliminate the deficit in 4 years.
The deficit can not be eliminated because partisans in the Democrat party are putting the interests of public sector unions ahead of the citizens of the country, and Republicans are putting the interests of the Armed forces ahead of the citizens of the country, and meaningful cuts in spending can not be made. Meanwhile, morons are calling for higher taxes without looking at the history of such policies failing to make a difference on deficits.
