“How about CUTTING SPENDING AND ENTITLEMENTS and GROWING THE ECONOMY? I guess this isn’t politically viable.”
We can’t do anything that’s inconsistent with big government now, can we? /sarc
CUTTING SPENDING AND ENTITLEMENTS and GROWING THE ECONOMY
Only if you believe in individual liberty and economic freedom. There are few of us out here. Those of us who know how to create value and who believe that is the correct path to prosperity are out numbered by those that capture value instead. This means a shift has occured. The ‘progressives’ just don’t see it yet. After the election of the leftist, producers have taken defensive action. We’re the ones ‘in the bleachers’ that Obama talks about. We refuse to participate in the destruction of our economy though the left is doing a pretty good job by themselves.
In a time of high unemployment and massive private job losses the answer is no.
Federal government becomes the last refuge of those who can’t find work in the private sector, either through federal work or federal assistance.
Think of the census workers. These people are encountering a very hostile public. Why then do it? They do it because its the only thing they can get and when it ends these people are back to square 1.
There are firms advertising jobs in the country who now openly advertise that they’ll only consider those already employed and informally that is practiced among many other companies. In an economic climate like this that is catastrophic.
I believe in small government and I’m anti-taxes. However, the time to cut the federal payroll and begin seriously taking on entitlements and the deficit was in the 1980s and 1990s because the only time an economy can absorb a cut in the public expenditures and not see it be a net negative and not a positive is when the economy is in boom because then the private economy easily absorbs those coming out of the public sector.
If you ended unemployment and laid off 15% of federal workers today all you would do is further harm consumer demand and make an already bad situation 5 times worse.
There is no magic panacea. There is no magic bullet. All the choices we’re faced with are bad. The easiest and most effective could very well end up being WWIII.