I’m still trying to wrap my head around the logic of supercharging the national deficit while simultaneously slashing budgets and making everything shittier.
It pays for tax cuts that not many people have asked for. They're really not "tax cuts," rather generational tax burden transfers. Merely refusing to pay for what we demand today and expecting future generations to bear higher tax/interest burdens.
Wall Street is starting to sound alarms about the level of the US debt. Interest expense soon to exceed $1 trillion annually. Jamie Dimon, one who many look to for his years of experience at JP Morgan, “You are going to see a crack in the bond market, OK?”
A billionaire author and noted investment expert released this book today -
https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Investment-Economic-Ray-Dalio/dp/1501124064
Front page of the WSJ today.
I've always been a "lowest taxes as possible" kind of guy, but never a "let my kids pay my freight" kind of guy. If we aren't willing to pay for the services we demand, we better accept the reality of what we are doing - placing ridiculous financial burned on the next generations such that they will never see the prosperity and opportunity we've had.
There is no way out of this at the current level of revenues. We are already $800 Billion in red, each year, after defense spending. That assumes no emergencies, no wars, no natural disasters, no pandemics, no Wall Street bailouts, all of which have occurred in the last 20 years, some occurring multiple times.
Cut every other government service beyond defense and we still are close to a trillion dollars in the whole. Yet, my generation feels they need a tax cut. If it means I pass less debt on to the next generation, I'd accept a tax hike. I've benefited to a high degree from all that this country provides. I could never buy my proportionate share of government services, defense, infrastructure, and institutions that keep our economy booming, for a price equivalent to what I pay in taxes.
These institutions that provide stable markets, mostly free trade, great opportunity, properly funded schools and police, medical systems, infrastructure to take are of sick/old/veterans, all create a situation where my hard work, risk, and luck (yeah, there's always plenty of luck involved) have been leveraged far beyond what the financial returns would have been in some other country. And as much as my balance sheet has been amplified due to all of the things that make this country the land of opportunity, the balance sheets of publicly traded corporations and billionaires have been amplified to a degree that would not be possible anywhere else on this planet. Yet, they think we all need a tax cut so we can transfer our debts to the next generation rather than suck it up ourselves.
These effing idgits think they're going to close the gap by further reducing revenues and playing around with a few small departments/agencies that are disliked by some of their pals. And we wonder why we're in the situation we are. It has hardly anything to do with Department of Interior, the subject of this thread, and everything to do with a collective group of 536 elected officials who have been financial derelicts for the last 25 years.
Think I'll go tie up some walleye spinners to get my mind clear.
www.govexec.com
