Ragan is almost universally felt to be the best modern era President, by "conservatives," yet he ran huge deficits.
List of countries by tax revenue to GDP ratio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio
Net government debt as percent of GDP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt
Any country could simply cut spending, raise taxation, grow (or shrink) GDP
From those listed, which IN YOUR VIEW has the best solution for this dilemma?
I’ve never understood this argument that since so and so deficit-spent its OK for the current guy to do it. I was against it when Democrats did it and against it when Republicans did it.
As for a solution, I have no idea what’s worked in other countries but I do know that Simpson-Bowes proposed a framework a few years ago as did Paul Ryan. If those are no good, I think a good start would be eliminating (except for key critical functions) the entire Departments of Education and Energy. Cutting every other department by 10% sounds good to me too. We’ve got to tackle entitlement reform including, IMO, raising the retirement age, and doubling the salary cap for social security withholding. If we want to get really serious, we’ll probably have to raise taxes and further cut some military spending.
There are tough choices coming. Better to tackle them sooner than later IMO. Continuing deficit-spending is making the matter worse as is kicking the entitlement-reform can down the road.
