keith: ah...the national debt issue...how much is too much? it does not seem to matter how many trillons it is? is 20 tril too much? how about 40 or 100?
ed, it really does matter how much it is. Debt has long been used to finance wars or expansion by nations, but whenever the ability to repay the debt is outstripped by additional debt and the interest costs to service it, the inevitable result is decline in economic power and overall decline in the standard of living for the citizenry. Look at France chasing away its' wealthiest citizens by imposing confiscatory tax rates. We've been doing the same thing here on a lesser scale. But the rich are just too smart to sit and watch it happen. When they go, so does their tax money AND their charity and philantropy. Raising marginal tax rates and limiting deductions is only a feel good solution that scarcely trims the debt while it just kills charity and philantropy. King Brown frequently references what he sees as America's choice for a talentless community organizer over a wealthy and successful aristocrat. He will never tell you about the tremendously higher percentage of income that Romney paid in toto... taxes, and charitable contributions vs. his hero Obama.
King Brown is an avowed Socialist, and he is fast and loose with the truth. Everything he has to say about this subject has been demonstrated to end in failure. We really shouldn't care what a certain percentage of economists have to say when our own eyes can see what has already happened. One of the classic ways to extend the inevitable is to inflate the currency in order to pay principal and interest in cheaper dollars, pounds, rubles, etc. We've seen hyperinflations in our own lives and in our own hemisphere. We've seen Argentinians spending their money as quickly as they made it because their pesos were losing so much value in only a matter of days. One of the greatest fears of the Great Recession of 2008 to present was that a hyperinflationary scenario could occur. It could still happen, and anyone who thinks we're out of danger is an ostrich with its head up its own ass. Obama is already trying to loosen the mortgage lending standards that Clinton started which caused the meltdown. Derivitives exposure by the big financials is almost too
large to fathom. The complexities and fragility of these markets is dwarfed only by the devastation that their collapse would create. Japan is still suffering from its' lost decade. It could be much worse here, and globally, if we stay on the runaway train with Socialist morons.
We all know what a gun or a truck or gasoline cost 40 years ago and what they cost now. We also know that for most, wages have not kept pace with inflation, and taxes take a larger percentage of what we do earn. But Socialist Libtards like King think that government ought to suck more out of productive citizens through taxes and inflationary monetary policy and redistribute it to those who are unproductive. Bigger government (which produces nothing) is always better to a Leftist Liberal. We see Greece and Spain and Italy becoming a huge drain upon the more fiscally responsible parts of the European Union. For King to come here and say that our massive debt is no problem is just stupid.
We are not spending more in times of recession and tightening our belts in better times. We are just constantly piling on more, at an ever increasing rate... in good times and bad. King knows this, but he is too dishonest to ever admit it. He can cite all the experts he wants. And I can cite Ph.D's who told us we were entering an ice age in the 1970's.
Although I've nearly always disagreed with King, I did think he was probably smarter than guys like homer or nca225. The gap appears to be narrowing.
