Am I worried about an economy that can't produce growth and jobs because too many people are cashing in interest payments and principle? I dunno, I guess my worries would depend equally on how the private is leveraging or not leveraging or deleveraging at that time. I would not be excited to see households, businesses, and the feds all try to delever at the same time.
Paul Ryan's budget guarantees an exploding deficit. a failed economy and a draconian killing of Medicare. It's the most cynically polarizing and doomed budget concept since Hoover.
You mean like the slow delever we have all been witnessing the last 5 years? It's all playing out over a long course. Households can't pay their debts, businesses suffer, credit freezes, banks fail, growth halts, governments intervene and try to spend their way out of the problem and take on even more debt . . . We're still witnessing that cycle. Not fun. And it could get worse. Sooner or later the bills have to be paid. And the more resources that go to paying down debt, the less that remains for other things.
For households, yes. I'm honestly not sure about governments. The United States retired its debt just once and the outcome was the panic of 1837... so I'm not sure that the appropriate long-run goal is paying off the debts. I think the proper goal might be as low as having enough nominal GDP growth to maintain the debt at some "suitable" % of GDP, which may or may not vary over time (it probably varies).
His "tax reform" is trickle down taxation on steroids which guarantees less revenues. It also ensures harming the economy dramatically by raising taxes on those who can't afford them.
Obama offered over $4T in changes and deficit reduction during the next ten years. His "grand bargain" was scored significantly higher than anything Ryan has put forth.
I'm sorry facts are irrelevant to you.
But your support the Ryan Plan which cuts revenues dramatically. Thus you aren't serious about deficit reduction.
The problem is what we are doing is not at all sustainable. In fact it is patently stupid. Out just this week from the oft cited CBO.
WASHINGTON: US debt is on track to double the size of the entire economy in the next 25 years, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported on Tuesday in its grim view of America's fiscal future.
The CBO said that under present policy, in which current tax rates are upheld and lawmakers do not curb entitlements, the portion of national debt held by the public would soar from 70 percent of GDP as forecast for the end of 2012 to 100 percent of GDP in just over a decade.
"After that, the growing imbalance between revenues and spending, combined with spiralling interest payments, would swiftly push debt to higher and higher levels," the CBO said in its 2012 Long-term Budget Outlook.
"Debt as a share of GDP would exceed its historical peak of 109 percent by 2026, and it would approach 200 percent in 2037."
I don't think we live in a world in which structural reform of entitlement programs is incompatible with short-term stimulus through infrastructure spending or tax rebates or any other thing. Though I may mis-assess political realities and be wrong.
In other words, you can envision meaningful entitlement reform and a redeployment of some newly available funds to things that would promote some form of growth.
Wish I was as optomistic as you. We can't even get the eligibility age for SS adjusted.
and over the next ten years the GDP will grow dramatically as well as there will be less unemployment. If nothing is changed revenues will be greater.
No I envision meaningful entitlement reform (long-run problem w/ long-run solution) alongside new borrowing to promote growth (short-run solution to short-run problem). It's possibly even more optimistic than what you think I think.