Should we worry about the deficit now, or later?

[Gustaf]

Later. You don't cut deficits during depressions. What you do is that you spend the surplus you've accumulated during the good years. Unless you elect George W. Bush and run a huge deficit during the boom years. Then you're just screwed, and that's that.

But I guess worrying about it is something you can start doing right now. It is worrying.

[Gustaf]

Later. You don't cut deficits during depressions. What you do is that you spend the surplus you've accumulated during the good years. Unless you elect George W. Bush and run a huge deficit during the boom years. Then you're just screwed, and that's that.

But I guess worrying about it is something you can start doing right now. It is worrying.

Uh, with a rare exception when the Congress restrained spending 1995-2000, there was no surplus in the federal treasury, whether the President was Republican or Democrat!

I'm not sure whether that contradicts or is relevant to my post? I use neither the term Republican nor Democrat in my post. I merely note that George W Bush got elected after a cycle of budget surpluses during good economic times and promptly spent all of it plus more creating a huge deficit before the crash. That was an extremely unsound economic policy which will hurt America for a long time. I'm not calling that policy inherently Republican nor conservative. I would point out though that few conservative Republicans can say today that they fought or voiced much concern over Bush's unbalancing of the budget.

[Gustaf]

The point is, liberals are only in favor of deficit reduction that does not involve compromise. 

What the?  'Compromise'?  Liberals have totally compromised to the point of being meaningless as a political force, Ford.

For gods sake man, the top tax rate in the US is something like 30% is it not?  And you say its the liberals who won't compromise?

The top rate is 35% opebo, going to 39.6% in 2011. The effective top rate is about 3% higher than that due to phase outs of Schedule A deductions. FICA taxes are on top of that, and 1.9% of that tax goes on forever, and that needs to be added too. So the current top effective rate is around 40%, going up to about 45% in 2011, plus whatever the Dems manage to add on with new legislation.

So my point still stands - top tax rates are exceedingly low in the US, so we can't really in fairness say the 'left' or what passes for left in the US has failed to compromise.

Now if top tax rates were still 70+% maybe.

What are you even comparing to? Sweden still has the second-highest tax-burden in the world and our top rate is about 55%.