Presidents come into office with a budget already structured by the previous government. Obama and Dems are certainly responsible for their stimulus spending but don’t conflate what they inherited with what they added to the deficit through legislation. Or at least don’t come to me with that bullshit and expect not to get called out on it.
Trump eliminates pay raises for civilian federal employees
- Thread starter vanzandt
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Presidents come into office with a budget already structured by the previous government. Obama and Dems are certainly responsible for their stimulus spending but don’t conflate what they inherited with what they added to the deficit through legislation. Or at least don’t come to me with that bullshit and expect not to get called out on it.
Okay. If your current job at Arby's doesn't work out, you can always get a job as an accountant for Wells Fargo Bank.
Try to stay out of prison though. Never good on the resume.
gig.
Hah. A resume. If I would have ran my business the way you think accounting works I would need a resume.
Yeah. It was just a quick q&a.
Arby’s: who has the meats?
Me: you do.
Arby’s: you’re hired!
Haven’t looked back since.
https://mises.org/wire/how-government-budget-deficits-make-us-poorer
Government Outlays — Not the Deficit — Matter
What matters for the health of the economy is not the size of the budget deficit but rather the size of the government outlays.When the government undertakes projects to boost the aggregate demand these projects are actually of a wealth-consuming nature. The fact that the private sector did not undertake these projects indicates that these projects are on the low priority list of individuals.
The implementation of these projects is going to undermine the well-being of individuals, because they are funded at the expense of projects that are of a higher priority and would otherwise be undertaken in the private sector.
When the government decides to promote a particular activity this means that the government will supply various individuals that are engaged in this activity with money. The received money in turn will permit individuals in that activity to access the pool of real wealth.
Now, the government is not a real wealth generator. It relies on its sources of funding from the private sector. This in turn means that the more government spends the less real funding will be available for the wealth generating private sector.
This will impede the creation of real wealth and impoverish the economy as a whole. Observe that if government could generate real wealth then obviously it wouldn't need to tax the private sector.
Various commentators are of the view that in the US and other major economies the government could lift economic growth by upgrading roads. The improvement of roads sounds like a great idea. The key question is whether for a given pool of wealth the US individuals could afford all this?
As an example an individual in his personal capacity might establish that it is a great idea to have an expensive Mercedes, unfortunately his pool of real wealth only allows him to have a second hand Toyota. If he were to allocate all his wealth towards the purchase of a Mercedes he runs the risk of severely damaging his and his family’s well being for he will not have enough means to feed his family and himself.
Diverting Wealth Away from Producers
The mode of diversion of real wealth from the private sector is, however, of secondary importance. What matters is that real wealth is diverted. The method of taking real wealth can be through direct taxes or indirect taxes and by means of monetary printing.
The effective level of tax then is dictated by government outlays — the more government plans to spend the more real wealth it will divert from the wealth generating private sector. In this respect we can see from the charts below that government outlays in absolute terms and relative to GDP have been following a visible up trend.
