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You're quite right that the argument shouldn't focus on future generations. Obama’s profligacy is never going to result in a tax burden radically different from the one we have now for the simple reason that the American people won't pay much more than they are paying now. They won't elect representatives who would vote for much higher taxes. If their representatives surprise them and vote for higher taxes anyway, they'll elect replacements. In the mean time, they'll evade the taxes.

Our fiscal burdens aren't leading to astronomical taxes. They're leading to default. It may be an open default or it may be default disguised by high rates of inflation, but default is the only way out. Our government, at all levels, is about to come acropper. The whole system will have to be redesigned to be sustainable.

Levin, and others should stop talking about unrealistic tax rates in the distant future and start talking about the fact that we can't finance the federal government without monetizing the debt.

Another thing bothers me about focusing on the taxes children and grandchildren are likely to pay decades hence. That tactic implicitly accepts the leftist idea that government's income is infinitely elastic. Government doesn't raise what it wants, it raises what free people are willing to give it. You can take more only by shooting people, which is ultimately self-defeating because you can't terrorize people into productivity. Our level of taxation is already probably above the revenue maximizing point. Government can't increase its income to match its expenditures. It has to reduce its expenditures to match its income. Conservatives shouldn't be making any argument that helps obscure that reality.