patrick.net

I think something like a balanced budget or surplus when GDP is growing by a certain amount, and a sliding scale, allowing deficits up to a certain level,, maybe 6% of GDP when in a recession , and maybe real small deficits when the GDP growth is flat might make sense.

Strong growth should require surpluses, mostly so that when GDP and revenue drops, it won't cause deficits to be too big.

But it has to rely on well defined measures of past GDP, and I don't know that those exist.

marcus says

We put off the big recession, and had a much worse one later instead.

Wasn't really the tax cuts that made the system unsustainable. . .

Here's an update of an earlier chart:

yellow is the cumulative household debt stimulus
red is the cumulative deficit-spending stimulus under Bush
green is the cumulative deficit-spending stimulus under Obama.

Bellingham Bob says

Wasn't really the tax cuts that made the system unsustainable. . .

I believe that that all three factors:

1) tax cuts

2) war spending

3) bs credit driven continuing real estate bubble

contributed to the bad recession we should have had, starting somewhere around 2002, being postponed to the much worse recession we had starting in 2008.

@Vicente

>Now when my X-Ray machine errors out and gives me a lethal overdose, my family can try to sue a bunch of Chinese subcontractors. Awesome! I'm so glad they are making best use of GE tax benefits to offshore jobs, layoff Americans, and enrich communists. Everything seems going according to the Koch Brothers plan nicely.

Great one! I just read it today...

@Troy

Thanks again for the graph...

HousingWatcher says

Of the 50% of the country that does not pay federal income tax, 75% of them make LESS than $20,000 a year. So youw ant to raise taxes on peopel all the way at the bottom while not raising taxes at the top?

Yes. I never said that it had to be a lot. When I made that little (or less) I had to pay income taxes.