{"id":27615,"date":"2017-11-04T14:31:39","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T19:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27615"},"modified":"2017-11-04T14:31:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T19:31:39","slug":"the-great-deficit-ruse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27615","title":{"rendered":"The Great Deficit Ruse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Great Deficit Ruse<\/a><\/h3>\n
Your intuition is right: tax cuts are good and tax increases are bad.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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If your profligate friend blew his budget on liquor, you might feel bad for him. But it\u2019s unlikely that you would be willing to fork over money to cover his mistake. He needs to figure it out. And maybe, then, he will learn a lesson for the future.<\/p>\n

This is exactly how I feel about all this whining about the federal deficit. I didn\u2019t cause it. It\u2019s not my problem. I should not be forced to pay for it. I don\u2019t work every day in order to earn money to pay for other people\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

It’s bad citizenship always to be willing to pay the government\u2019s debts. <\/span><\/p>\n

Admit that you agree. You don\u2019t really care about the deficit. Not really. It\u2019s an abstraction to you. More crucially, the deficit is not your fault. You are not responsible for paying for one dime of the federal debt. No portion of your justly made income should be taken to cover the fiscal irresponsibility of anyone except perhaps your children.Actually, it\u2019s very bad parenting always to be ready to pay the kids\u2019 debts. It\u2019s similarly bad citizenship always to be willing to pay the government\u2019s debts.<\/p>\n

All this media talk\u2013and it is incessant and ubiquitous\u2013about how the deficit is way more important than your property rights completely disregards the realities of politics. Namely: politicians and bureaucrats desperately need an excuse to take your money. Making you pay for their past mistakes is as good an excuse as any.<\/p>\n

Your intuition is right: tax cuts are good and tax increases are bad.<\/p>\n

But hold on: doesn\u2019t that just shove the burden of debt onto the next generation? My answer: not if the next generation is similarly unwilling to cough up taxes to pay for the dumb things government does.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Great Deficit Ruse Your intuition is right: tax cuts are good and tax increases are bad. If your profligate friend blew his budget on liquor, you might feel bad for him. But it\u2019s unlikely that you would be willing to fork over money to cover his mistake. He needs to figure it out. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3461,201,2624,14323,14991,379,16260,16863,1257,783],"class_list":["post-27615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debts","tag-deficit","tag-deficits","tag-fiscal-policy","tag-foundation-for-economic-education","tag-government","tag-jeffrey-a-tucker","tag-plunder","tag-taxation","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27616,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27615\/revisions\/27616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}