On January 25, 2013, Bruce Bartlett writes in The Fiscal Times:
It is a standard talking point of Republicans and deficit hawks of all political stripes that federal spending is out of control; that major surgery is needed, especially on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, to get the budget on a sustainable course.
In fact, our long-term deficit situation is not nearly as severe as even many budget experts believe. The problem is that they are looking at recent history and near-term projections that are overly impacted by one-time factors related to the economic crisis and massive Republican tax cuts that lowered revenues far below normal.
Taking a longer-term view, such as that in a recent Treasury Department report, shows that our longer-term fiscal problem is in fact quite manageable.
The point is not to assess blame for the deficit; only to emphasize the temporary nature of the historically large deficits of the last few years and show that they did not result from an explosion of new spending initiated by Obama. This is important because Republicans continually make that claim, thus justifying their belief that spending must be massively slashed, especially for entitlements.
Getting back to the chart, we see that spending for every single government program going forward is remarkably stable as a percentage of GDP. Those who complain loudest about spending and deficits nearly always base their concerns on projections of nominal spending that are unadjusted for inflation, growth of the population or growth of the economy. This is intellectually dishonest.
What Bruce Bartlett fails to recognized that FUTURE economic growth will continue to benefit the upper 5 percent of the American population as productive capital ownership further is concentrated. With tectonic shifts in the technologies of production resulting in the displacement of labor with the non-human factor of production––”machines” or what economists term “capital”––will mean that there will progressively be less “customers with money” to support the economy and thus more dependent on taxpayer-supported government debt to prop-up the economy.
The solution to income inequality, prosperity, opportunity and economic justice is to focus on OWNERSHIP CREATION and implement the Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future (http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797). This is the ONLY practical means to eliminate deficits and pay off the national debt, while creating a strong, energized growth economy.
The fundamental economic solution is to create income for EVERY American by simultaneously broadening private, individual ownership of FUTURE productive capital economic growth and fully paying the profit dividends to the new American owners of the income-producing capital assets of our corporations.
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm