What jumps out at me is the change in GDP. W's 76.7% increase in debt got a 44% increase in production. Obie's 58.4% increase grew output by 8.5%.
Not effective debt management in either case really, but clearly one is better than the other. No?
Originally Posted by Ducbutter
Actually Federal spending is not out of control because the graph is absolute numbers.
As a percentage of the GDP Federal spending has been about 20 percent of GDP since the early 1960s. It has gone up to around 22 percent in the last few years because of increased spending due to unemployment, which always happens in a recession.
The problem is that Federal revenues have plummeted in the last twelve years.
Whereas Federal revenues from taxes used to be around 17-18 percent of GDP since the 1950s, because of the Bush tax cuts revenues have only been around 15 percent or less of GDP.
This is where the debt is coming from.
I don't like taxes, particularly the vast increases in state, local and city taxes that have happened in the last thirty years.
However Federal taxes have gone down, and I'd rather pay more in Federal taxes and have a healthy economy than pay less and have a sick one.
We need to let the Bush tax cuts simply expire like they were meant to do.