ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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If the republicans planned to "reform" entitlements the way they "reformed" medicare, the democrats were smart to say no.
Taxes will go up because you can't get something for nothing. People have a hard time with that concept. Basic physics. Law of the universe. Somebody, in the future, must pay for the spending that is not covered by taxes today. All arguments about growth and inflation are moot. The future still pays for the spending today.
The only caveat: default. The US could default on foreign holders of debt. Then everyone pays: big time.
Taxes are going up. The longer we wait, the more they go up.
I can believe that taxes are going up, but I also believe that entitlement spending is going down (or not rising as fast as projected, which is enough). Everyone says it can't happen, but it has happened in other countries. The political impasse can be broken. All it takes is a crisis, and we're going to get one.
The best example is Sweden in the early '90s, when government spending was cut by a staggering 15% of GDP. Reform does happen . . . once all other options are exhausted.
Yes, taxes will go up as they must to provide for a larger portion of the elderly. Cutting meager retirement benefits makes ever less sense as companies shed their pensions. Spending will go up, but not by as much as projected because healthcare will eventually be reformed when costs meet reality.
Taxes will go up because you can't get something for nothing. People have a hard time with that concept. Basic physics. Law of the universe.
No, T. R. Elliot, that's an economic law, and as you have stated before, all present economics is pseudoscience and can't be trusted. But then, that was one of your posts, so I guess I wasn't really supposed to take it seriously. But still, it was your post.
The Democrats didn’t really say “no” to reforming entitlements; they just insisted on a condition of “no privatization”. Whether or not it’s a good idea, privatization is not an indispensable element of entitlement reform. On the other hand, being the minority party in Congress, perhaps the Democrats should have been more willing to compromise.
Then again, being the majority party in Congress, the Republicans in theory didn’t really need the Democrats. In the end, apparently, a lot of Republicans couldn’t quite say “yes” to Social Security reform. And neither side has seriously discussed Medicare reform yet.