The $45 Trillion Dollar Problem

Discussion in 'Economics' started by ShoeshineBoy, Feb 16, 2004.



  1. this isnt true.In past generations a family had several children mainly for 2 reasons. first so many children died that you had more just in case you lost some. and second people had more childern because the economy was mostly rural farming and more children were free labor. in early america it took a family of 5 or more to do the work on a farm that a small sized tractor can do in hours today. i grew up on a farm. we had a family of 7 and everybody had to work to keep caught up. that farm is now rented out to a modern farmer and he farms it in 2 days with his modern machinery.
     
    #11     Feb 16, 2004
  2. >first so many children died that you had more just in case you >lost some.
    I don't count the children that die in the statitistics
    >and second people had more childern because the economy >was mostly rural farming
    I don't talk about last century, I'm talking about modern time where economy is no more rural.

     
    #12     Feb 16, 2004
  3. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=22824

    WorldNetDaily.com

    I've never been more proud of any piece of journalism than I am of this month's cover story in WorldNet magazine, the offline companion to WorldNetDaily.com.

    Written by Anne Williamson, one of the world's most knowledgeable experts on the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, it tells a fantastic but true story of money and power and the way these institutions adversely affect the lives of millions and threaten the financial and personal security of every American.

    Most people don't understand this story. Most people don't have a clue as to what the IMF and the World Bank are. Most people don't know anything about the way they threaten the interests of average Americans.

    I never understood it myself until I read Anne Williamson's extremely insightful piece in WorldNet Magazine this month.



    http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2001/Williamson.htm
    Anne Williamson, Contributing Writer, WorldNetDaily.com
    "The Fed: How your money - and life - are controlled by America's banking system"
    http://realmedia.cts.com/ramgen/crash/jpuplava/netcastdaily/radioexperts/050201.rm

    http://realmedia.cts.com/ramgen/crash/jpuplava/netcastdaily/radioexperts/092601.rm
    http://realmedia.cts.com/ramgen/crash/jpuplava/netcastdaily/radioexperts/061201.rm

     
    #13     Feb 16, 2004
  4. .
     
    #14     Feb 16, 2004
  5. I agree with you that the Fed has almost theoretically unlimited powers that could potentially be abused by a despot. Who knows? Maybe there was some malevolent intent when they initially drafted and implemented the Fed Reserve System.

    Regardless, I can't help but laugh: the Fed Chairmen have found that they must dance on a cultural tightrope. In our society at least, the Fed Chairman's every word is micro-scrutinized and published around the globe for tens of thousands of investment, trading and media analysts to endlessly grope...

    If there was a plan for greed and duplicity, it has most certainly been short circuited and the Fed System has become the "Rothschild's worst nightmare"...
     
    #15     Feb 16, 2004
  6. This problem will be fixed by moving up the age of benefits eligibility. Plus people live longer and will work longer, contributing more taxes.

    It's still a problem, but not as bad as you think.

    Also, keep in mind that something as "small" as a 5% tax increase across the board solves all problems and still keeps us tax rates well below European counterparts.
     
    #16     Feb 17, 2004
  7. I think people will have other concerns in 30 or 40 years and not be worried at all about social security. They will wonder why there is no safe food, no clean water, no telephone service, no electricity, no heat, no gasoline, no health care, etc. Little things like that.
     
    #17     Feb 17, 2004
  8. It actually is quite easy to express this deficit projection in a more meaningful way. If the deficit is expressed as a share of future GDP, then it is immediately possible to place it in context. The study by Gokhale and Smetters actually provides this information. The study projects the present discounted value of future GDP as $682 trillion (p.37). This means that its projected deficit is equal to 6.5 percent of future GDP, implying that a tax increase of 6.5 percent of GDP would be needed to close the gap. This is far from a trivial sum, but it is not necessarily an impossible burden either.
    It is also worth noting that most other industrialized nations face far higher tax burdens than the United States. According to OECD data, the 2000 tax share of GDP in the United States, Belgium, and Norway were 29.6, 45.6, and 40.3% respectively. These higher tax burdens have not prevented the economies of these nations from continuing to grow and prosper. Belgium, France and Norway enjoyed higher productivity levels than the United States throughout the 1990s, despite their higher tax rates.[4] Many countries with far higher tax burdens than the United States, such as Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, enjoy lower unemployment rates.
    This assumption about rising health care costs is enormously important to the study’s deficit projection. If the United States managed to contain health care costs, so that apart from demographic factors they grew at the same rate as nominal GDP, then the projected deficit would be equal to just 1.5 percent of future GDP, or $10 trillion. While even this figure is not a trivial sum, there would be little basis for the nation to be too consumed with such a deficit projection. This methodology would have produced comparable deficit projections for most of the last four decades.


    these are highlights of full article which can be found here
    http://www.cepr.net/Deficit_Scare.htm
     
    #18     Feb 17, 2004
  9. People point to Europe and how they do things as some model or benchmark for us to follow. That is not apporiate. Compared to us, high tax countries are basket cases. France, for example let 10000 people die last summer due to high stress. Thank about that happening here. No way! People sit around in parts of high tax Europe with nothing to do and with little opportunity compared to what it is like here in America.

    Another thing the high tax and big goverment does in Europe is promote corruption. We are finding out now that Chirac's buddies got several hundred million dollars in oil bribes from Iraq. No way in America does a former UN amabassador or a member of the Presidents staff have the power to collect bribes like that. Only in Europe where all the action is in working for the goverment.


    John
     
    #19     Feb 17, 2004