At what point do we start pulling back government benefits to ballance budgets?

Question

Seems like every day I read again about a future budget over-run for the fed, for the states, even in my town saying they blew the plowing budget for the year after the first storm.

Today Yahoo has an article about how most states are not setting nearly enough to fund employee retirement promises. We are going into deep over-runs due to our wars - on Iraq, on Afganistan, on Drugs, on Poverty, etc.

I am not saying we should stop funding, but every year, every day, we add a little more debt, raise taxes a little more.

At what point will we hit an economic limit to make this not viable.

I am not saying get rid of taxes like the "nut of the day". I am asking what is our financial limit, because we seem to working towards it?

Another way to put it - if we are taxed at a net rate of about 50% now (argue that if you want, it is not my point) and people say times are "tough", what happens when we need to raise it to 55% or 60% or 70% to cover all this stuff?

I have also heard that taxes at significant levels are inversely proportional to the prosperity of those taxed.

Answer 1

We'll never reach that point. Our government will plug on and the money will come in and life will be fine, it always has over time. Actually, we could reduce our deficit just by reducing waste vice cutting any programs. I'm not talking about the war or anything else that is debatable, I'm talking pure waste.

Answer 2

Well, 7 years ago when Bush took office, we were in the surplus. He ran that to a $9 Trillion debt, more than the combined deficits of every administration in the history of the nation COMBINED. Even if you factor out the war and Katrina, it's still over $7 trillion. Sounds like gross incompetence to me at the very least. The shortfall damn sure didn't go to the poor and needy or we would have solved hunger in the US with that much cash.

Answer 3

yesterday.