At 06:05 PM 07/02/05 -0800, David Brin wrote:
snip
* We can't grow our way out of these deficits. As the NY Times analysis notes: "Despite strong economic growth and soaring corporate profits last year, federal tax revenues amounted to only 16.3 percent of the total economy, comparable with levels in the 1950's and far below the level of 21 percent reached during the stock market bubble in 2000." Spending is over 20% of GDP and RISING (it went down every year for 8 years under Clinton, to 18% when Bush took office). 20 minus 16 equals A BIG DEFICIT. As Robert Bixby, executive director of the bipartisan Concord Coalition notes, "What's unrealistic is that they are trying to fund a government with today's demands on a 1950's stream of revenue."
This last point is crucial. The whole basis for giving a trillion dollars to the top 5% in this country was that they would invest it all in ways that generate so much economic growth that new tax revenues will quickly erase the deficit. What a joke.
Not really. These people expect the rapture, and that takes care of all the money problems.
Of course, they might *get* the techno-rapture, nanotech/AI and the like.
Keith Henson
PS. I have changed my opinion re upload the lot of them and putting them all in a simulated heaven. It isn't unethical considering what they would do to us otherwise. So go for it.
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