The deficit
Yes - in fact, I wrote the chapter on the deficit. (I can send you an op-ed version, if you'd like).
My view is that the major problem facing the American economy is over-taxation, not the deficit. In my article, I compared economic growth and federal fiscal policy in five periods of Us history, and I show how tax policy (not deficit policy0 is the major determinant of economic growth.
Also, remember that the federal debt today is 36 percent of GDP - It bottomed out at 33 percent in 2000. Compare that over 50 percent in the early 1990s, 60 percent in France and Germany and 150 percent in Japan.
The main argument against a deficit is that it Pushes up interest rates - though of course interest rates are near record lows today, and are LOWER in Japan than in the US (the opposite of what deficit hawks would suggest).
So something's wrong with the "Rubin" view.
Thank you for your answer. I am not well versed in economics and when liberals start ranting about the deficit I don't have much recourse except to say that we had a large one back in the Reagan years and it seemed to have disappeared without much effort.
Mr. Verjee and Mr. Martin,
Thank you for answering my questions and for writing this book. I'm so sick of being surrounded by anti-Bush books at the bookstore, and I'm sick of my liberal socialist classmates! I hope that this book will give me the intellectual ammo I need straight from our leaders to waste them in arguments. Thanks!
One last question. As a red blooded american young man (I'm in my early twenties) I have to ask: Did you meet Sheri Valera at the RNC?
Do you subscribe to the notion that tax cuts balloon deficits in the short term but act as a restraint on long term spending growth and are thus a net plus in the march toward limited government?
One thing you fellas can do to help W in the next 2 months is to get him to understand and then respond to what people are seeing as the squeeze on our dollars. Seems salaries can't keep up with costs -
I am not crying about gas proces, they are lower now then they were, price adjusted, in the Carter years...but look how Bush 41 got pole-axed for not knowing the price of a gallon of milk? $4.00 a gallon! $9.00 lb steak, hamburger #3.99/lb., even bread is $1.50....
He better be warned that many people can't see beyond those prices...