Wednesday, November 14, 2018

The US going farther into debt

US budget jumps to 100 billion at start of fiscal year.

A ballooning U.S. budget shortfall -- fueled by tax cuts, spending hikes and an aging population.

I'd add, spending keeps increasing for things like the military, Medicare, veterans benefits and so forth. Meanwhile, tax cuts don't generate the revenue that Republicans predict. The increase in revenue falls far short of the increase in spending.

The economy is strong, these days, but much of the income is not taxable. Its less taxable due to tax cuts. Much of today's prosperity is boosted by federal spending, however. For instance, Bellingham's biggest employer, these days, is Saint Joe's Hospital. Medicine is now a big part of the economy nationwide, not just here in Bellingham. Much of that is Medicare and Medicaid spending. An aging population.

In recent years, the Federal Reserve has helped to finance the debt by printing money, but the Fed is tightening up the money supply, a bit, due to worries about inflation. This means even more actual borrowing.

Somehow the government still gets by with this. We, the population, trust the government as it's basically still the only game in town. Much of our savings, retirement savings and so forth is based on government debt. The government continues to be able to borrow money.

Our aging population is likely to continue driving deficits. One way to partially remedy this is to allow more legal immigration of especially young working people into the US. Increase the payroll and the tax rolls. Still, immigration can be overwhelming as world population is growing past 7.5 billion. There's only so many people our countries of, USA, Canada, Europe and Australia can take. That's why we still need to promote birth control, worldwide and also try and improve economic and human rights conditions in the countries where people are coming from. To keep the flow of immigration manageable. Otherwise it could overwhelm us causing economic and political problems; push back for instance. Think climate change refugees. The problem could overwhelm us. Still, a steady flow of immigrants can enlarge our economy and help pay for our aging baby boom generation's retirement. At least modestly raising our quotas for legal immigration would help. Also we would need to plan for more density in many of our residential areas to address the housing shortage that growing populations bring. Rational planning, that's what we need. Is that too much to expect?

As for taxes, they should be higher on especially the idol rich. Even upper middle class; like the top 20% probably needs to pay a bit more on personal income. Keeping some of the tax cuts for business and corporations might be okay, tho not popular. We don't want to smother business with too many taxes. At the same time, I'm not a big fan of corporate culture. Business is okay, I don't hate it, but I do think we are too motivated by greed. Quality of life matters more to me than income. We need to think that way. Still, business is a good tool to continued prosperity. If we want prosperity, I can understand not taxing business to death. If money is working in the economy, that's okay, but we do need to reign in the idol rich, which I think are a problem. Super rich individuals who mostly spend their money on high living. The rich pushing up real estate prices and so forth. Also, in our quest for prosperity, we have to take climate change into account. Pay more for energy. Convert to solar. I'll also add that we need more fair income distribution, but I'm running out of time and I can't solve all the world's problems here Lol.

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