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Wage growth went negative in 1973, so it's not all Obama or Bush, it's a long term fall in wages; there has been no growth in wages. Combine this with concentrated wealth and businesses, the latter buying huge tax breaks and subsidies for themselves, and you see the problem clearly; destroy the tax base and it distorts the picture, making it look like 'entitlements' are increasing when they're actually falling like rocks in real terms right long with wages, and of course claiming SS as a 'entitlement' is a fake claim ideologues like to use by lumping it in with food stamps and the like, all number which pale in comparison with the tax subsidies that don't make it into the book keeping on govt. spending and expenditure numbers, so they can claim really high percentages of 'entitlement spending'. A tax deduction for installing solid gold sinks in your private executive bathroom doesn't show up in Federal budget spending accounting.
The deficit is small relative to the size of our economy, so it's not nearly the big giant problem ideologues make it out to be. The point that govt. spending isn't efficient is a good one, though. Nothing will change that except a massive decades long anti-corruption campaign, like the one began by Singapore's oligarchy in the 1960's and still enforced today. that isn't going to happen, since the Federal govt. and our politicians do indeed represent and reflect the morals and honesty of the American people, as all govts. are reflections of the cultures they exist in, sad to say.
One of the best ways to keep it under control, or make it disappear altogether, is to follow one of Henry George's key platforms, a Federal real estate tax, and a modern modification of his premises, a tax in intellectual property our education and Federal research spending produces. A lot of the Federal spending is based on maintaining the security and value land, so it should be taxed to cover all that, for one; no more letting freeloading hogs buy up large tracts of land for next to nothing and then get rich for merely sitting on it doing nothing when it goes up in price, for instance.
Some numbers to play with here. As most informed people know, the GAO and CBO have both been politically neutered as a credible source on any data for a long time now, and of course the Fed has also been a total joke since Volcker, and it has also quit releasing certain data to the public at all any more, M3 and the like, especially since 2015, so trying to find out basic stuff like national net investment ratios is nearly impossible, as is finding dis-investment data, but have some fun anyway.
The Government Spending to GDP Ratio: Down, Down, Down | Econbrowser
I find it cognitively dissonant for right wingers to babble on and on and on about 'high tax rates in the U.S.', when we have had record foreign investment here for years, while having subsidies for domestic corporations that actively encourage dis-investment to labor racketeering countries, but that's just me; those countries are never going to be the consumers Americans and Euros are, so that scheme can't possibly work in the long term, but right wingers believe a lot in magic, apparently, and left wingers area of course utterly clueless about the rest of the planet and think 'diversity' is just grand, never mind the cultural realities.
In any case this guy says a lot about the truth of hte matter; we'll have to wait and see if Trump's policies increase actual real re-investment or just continues to bloat the top with no money circulation back through the entire real economy.
Bruce December 16, 2013 at 9:18 pm
Local, state, and federal gov’t spending to GDP:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=q5r
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=q5s
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=q5t
Total gov’t spending to GDP and private wages to GDP:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=q5u
The sum of rentier income (interest, dividends, and from assets) and total gov’t receipts as a share of GDP, sum of public and private wages to GDP, and private wages to GDP:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=q5v
Rentier income plus tax receipts far exceeds total and private wages.
Labor is inexpensive/productive/profitable compared to current rentier claims on wages, production, profits, and gov’t receipts, and gov’t claims on wages, production, and profits.
The private sector is screaming for investment in labor and production at sustainable 2-3% labor returns vs. unsustainable, non-productive rent seeking and assumed cost of growth of gov’t at 7-10% and 5-6% respectively.
But the TBTE banks, with the able assistance of the Fed, are promoting increasingly levered financial bubbles with assets concentrated to the top 0.01-0.1% to 1-10% at no velocity, which is like a giant vacuum sucking savings, investment, production, employment, wage gains, and purchasing power of labor from the economy.
Let's repeat that first line of his comment again ...
Rentier income plus tax receipts far exceeds total and private wages.
And again ...
Rentier income plus tax receipts far exceeds total and private wages.
In case it still doesn't register yet, let's do it again ....
Rentier income plus tax receipts far exceeds total and private wages.
Later, when I get time, I will compare some of this stuff with the retarded spin that passes for 'analysis' at such idiotic sites as The Tax Foundation, who apparently hope we all think the real problem is all these American proles have too much money and they won't save anything from their part time $7 an hour jobs n stuff; they keep blowing it on gourmet French restaurant and limos, according to the morons over there.
