ACCORDING to a new CNN poll, 63% of Americans want the imminent "super committee" to call for tax increases on high earners and 57% want large cuts in domestic spending. Sounds sensible! But don't get your hopes up. Only 47% favour big cuts in defence spending. Worse, a mere 35% support "major changes" in Social Security and Medicare. I guess there's a reason defence and old-age entitlements dominate the budget: voters like it that way. Commenting on the significance of the debt-ceiling standoff, Brink Lindsey of the Kauffmann Foundation writes:
Read Full Article »We are in the early stages of resolving a huge and enduring incoherence in American political economy: for a generation now, the American public has wanted more government than it has been willing to pay for. For many years it has been painfully apparent to anyone who cares to face facts that entitlement spending, especially on health care, is on a growth path that will eventually require enormous tax increases to sustain. Yet thus far, any efforts to either restructure entitlements or raise the taxes needed to pay for them have run into a buzz saw of hostility from the electorate.
But as Stein’s Law tells us, things that can’t go on forever won’t. The current, unsustainable political equilibrium has endured as long as it has because of the government’s ability to pile up debt. But that ability is being progressively exhausted, and so the looming choice between our relatively lavish welfare state and our relatively modest tax bill cannot be delayed much longer.
