Read it and weep conservatives.

[jon]

I thought Obama would cut spending on the wars and roll back tax cuts. He's done neither.

 

I completely understand your sentiments because I felt the same way, but there are a couple catches.

1. With the wars if you decrease spending when you are trying to get out of the conflict you actually risk extending the conflict which will cost you more money in the long run. This similarly happens in project management where you don't dedicate enough resources to a project and it just ends up costing you more because things got screwed up.

2. I think there are two reasons why Obama kept the tax cuts from what I read. First, it's not a good idea to raise taxes in a depressed economy (or cut public spending), it will just make things worse. Like Greece and Spain worse. I think the other thing is the Bush tax cuts lowered the dividend tax to 15%, and while people like Mittens and the Kochheads love this because most of their income comes in the form of dividends, many small business owners took advantage of that and formed S corps, paid themselves a small reasonable salary, and then as a shareholder in their business took the rest of the profit as a dividend at 15%. With this gone their effective tax rate goes up. Again not what you want in a depressed economy. What should have happened is changed the dividend tax to a tiered system like Canada does, where the first 250k is taxed at 15%, and then up from there. That way small business or investors owners get a good tax break and removes the loophole for big time investors.

[backclipped]

What's your take on Richard Duncan's perspective in "The New Depression". By his account less spending will only bring out the spiked shoulder pads and mohawked plunderers....which, or course, is a hard pill to swallow for conservative stalwarts.