Posted: 8/30/2008 10:31:00 AM EDT
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Maybe my mind is too simple to understand this argument that politicians love to make. I hear attack ads all the time in local politics and nationally that "This guy inherited an XX million dollar budget surplus and left us XX million dollars in debt." Here's my take on the situation... If the government has a massive surplus, to me that indicates that they're either A: taxing us too much, B: not using the money like they should to improve things, or C: all of the above. Now obviously, being massively in debt is never a good thing, but how exactly is having a large budget surplus supposed to be a good thing for the government? If anything, that seems to indicate that they are taking too much money from us for no reason and need to cut taxes. Ideally, the government should break even and have nothing left over or be partially in debt. Am I just stupid or what? Can someone explain this to me? |
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The Clinton "budget surplus" was the result of a lot of smoke and mirrors combined with surging revenues during the dot-com era. And so long as we're over $9 trillion in immediate debt, today, and ~$60 trillion+ in debt over the next 75 years, there is no such thing as a "surplus"... that word just means that some calculation of revenue exceeds some calculation of outlays. Any "extra" money would (or should) go towards paying down that debt. |
| nice try that no debt was paid down and the surplus distributed to the upperclasses is rather sick. Now instead of borrowing to finance the war against allah, we are borrowing to pay interest. Say what you want but Jimmy Carter left us in much better shape than Rayguns did. Don't get me started about sending manufacturing capacity to the commies. |
Ok, again... but in English this time. |
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I have my doubts that the .gov really is in debit. I'm beginning to think that they are keeping mutiple sets of books. I think that they have one set of for everybody to see & the others are for undisclosed investments. Just Google CAFR or Comprehensive Annual Financial Report & start reading. |
Which parallel dimension are you from? |