--- In [email protected], "wgm4u" <anitaoaks4u@...> wrote: > > Taxing the 'rich' alone, will never get us out of our present > condition,
Of course not. I don't believe anyone has ever suggested that. It's only part of the solution. Tax the rich a little more, cut taxes a little for everyone else. And take the additional measures I outline abelow. > we need to cut spending and entitlements (and > government pensions). Au contraire, Pierre, that's exactly what we must NOT do until the economy is back on its feet again. What we need to do is *increase demand* for what businesses are selling. Which means getting more money in people's pockets for them to purchase what's being sold (not talking luxury goods here but stuff that folks put off buying when they're hard up). And that means more government spending, on infrastructure projects (creating jobs), more money to the states so they can hire back workers and fund their own jobs programs, etc. When demand starts rising, businesses will start hiring again, so yet more jobs, more money in people's pockets, more demand, even higher wages--and *more tax revenues*, both from individuals and businesses. *Then* we can start paying down the deficit without creating additional hardship for the elderly, the poor, the disabled, and the middle class, and without stifling businesses. If you *cut* government spending, cut "entitlements," don't fund jobs programs, give less money to the states, that means *less* money in people's pockets, so they buy less, businesses don't prosper and have to lay workers off, tax revenues decline, the poor and elderly and disabled become destitute and the middle class is severely squeezed. We can live with the deficit, even a higher deficit, for the time being. Not forever, obviously, but long enough to get the economy back in shape. If we try to tackle the deficit first, we'll be in for a very long, very hard, very painful, totally unnecessary slog. > Your short sighted ideas are the same > as those leading Greece in to bankruptcy..... Also wrong. You simply can't compare Greece's economy with ours. The dynamics are too different. Greece's austerity program, by the way, may stave off the immediate crisis, but it's going to cripple its economy for the foreseeable future. It doesn't have the resources to pull itself up by the bootstraps the way the U.S. can.
