It all gets paid for one way or another.

SangamonTaylor: The deficit is tiny. It's only 1.3% GDP, which is tiny compared to our historical spending (i.e., during WWII it was over 37% GDP).

The deficit's percentage of GDP is really the only thing that matters. As long as we have pro-growth leaders, our economy will be growing, and the Public Debt to GDP ration will keep falling.

The only people who constantly bring up the hard deficit numbers are the politicians that are out of power. Nothing but scare tactics.

Deficit /= Debt. I hate it when people conflate the two. Clinton, for example, got rid of the deficit but barely touched the actual debt.

And we only got away with that during WWII because of the massive economic boom that happened post-war. There's no similar boom on the horizon.

sdd2000: When was there an actually reduction in the debt?

I was under the impression that some of that surplus went towards the debt. It might not have, though. Even if it had, it would have been a minuscule percentage.

SangamonTaylor: Yes, we do have a large public debt, but our GDP is outgrowing it, and that's the only way to pay it off.

The GDP is outgrowing it only in nominal terms, due to inflation.

SangamonTaylor: We need to focus on pro-growth policies

What exactly do you consider "pro-growth"? Actual government policies have had little effect on the economy the past few years, other than inflationary deficit spending. The boom-bust cycle we're seeing played out this decade is a result of the Fed's insanely low interest rates a few years ago. The bust that's going on now is because the Fed has finally been forced to jack up interest rates to a more reasonable level, which is having the effect of pulling the rug out from under all that easy-credit-funded malinvestment. It's had nothing to do with "pro-growth" policies, and certainly not the fact that Bush sent everyone a few hundred dollars several years ago.

birdboy2000: "Free" markets are anathema to democracy



/agrees

birdboy2000: Churchill2004

Better marx than child labor.

SangamonTaylor: Granted, it's a couple years outdated. Your "half salary" is more scare tactics...

The Congressional Budget Office begs to differ...

birdboy2000: Child labor, however, is a direct consequence of an unregulated market

helix400: And you know why interest expense is expended to explode? Because social program spending (the kind of spending that takes well over half of our annual expenditures), is expected to explode further. Well past the point of sustainability.

You can't raise taxes to fix it. You can't go into debt to fix it. The only way to fix it is cutting back social programs' promises.

Exactly.

Corvus: So please elaborate how "Free market economy" and "no regulation" does not cause child labor.

It's not up to me to prove a negative- I can simply disprove the assertion by pointing out that the worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution did not take place in a free market economy, they occurred in an economy where the government used its power to actively assist business/employers at the cost of the rest of society. It was a failure of corporatism, not capitalism.

helix400: If Democrats run on a platform on heavily reforming social programs specifically to bring down social programs' costs, (rather than throwing more money at the problem like most do now), I'd likely vote for them

They might talk about doing that with pre-existing social programs, but keep in mind at the same time they're talking about slapping on billions of dollars in new social programs. "Universal Healthcare", "Universal Pre-K", $5k Baby Bonds, etc...

The real solution is to stop wasting all this money on our global empire and massively oversized military, because we can do that now. We can then use the elbow room that gives us to start cutting/phasing out all the social programs that are the real problem.