What should be done about the massive deficits and huge debt our governments have?
 

Guess this is a big news story in the states right now. Obama wants to raise taxes but the Republicans say they won't have it. If you had the power would you raise taxes? Cut spending? Nothing and just keep borrowing money. Crank out the printing presses and just make the money out of thin air? Default on the debt and have a fresh start? Something else?

Destroy china and steal all of their money.

Raise taxes. There's no other choice, and raise them on the richest Americans. Americans are paying taxes at an all-time historic low, the lowest in history, and this has been the case for decades. This is why so many problems began.

The richest are getting a free ride. It's insane. In the end, the bills have to be payed, and working men and women shouldn't see their benefits slash just to help the top 1%, which is what they continuously do. Oh yeah, and ending a whole bunch of wars, and making big cuts to the Pentagon would help dramatically. NAFTA has also got to be done away with.

Yes, I'm going to go there: you can blame Republicans for the failed economy. This all started with Reagan and his trickle down economics fascist policy, the biggest scam in history! NAFTA was also drawn up by Republicans, and George Bush. Bill Clinton, in an effort to look bipartisan, signed it. Republican philosophy = don't tax corporations. They'll create jobs for Americas. Nope. They ship jobs overseas. These people don't want to pay a cent on production. This is another reason why illegal immigration in the US is overlooked. Corporations make out like bandits on slave labor. Free Market Capitalism is a failure. We saw that yet again with Wall Street. Greed is a human trait. There needs to be regulation. Reagan allowed banks to buy up banks. That used to be prohibited. Now, one bank collapses, and a ton more go down with them.

For a country that's so anti-communism, they sure don't mind getting all their goods from China.

It's not a shock that every Republican Administration of the last 100 years has raked up the largest amount of debt. That wasn't until Obama, and quite honestly, Obama saved the auto industry, but the stimulus wasn't nearly big enough. Every economist has said this. He did some major things right, but where he went wrong was not going after corporations.

They came to Washington in their private jets, with their gold cups extended, looking for money. If you watched these idiots speak, it was unconscionable how removed from reality they are. They make billions of dollars, and one guy was going to get one million cut from his salary, and he freaked out. He thought he was going to be out on the street. They're still getting their bonuses, and this is with federal money!

Well you can't just keep borrowing and priniting more money will just lead to huge inflation and wont actually solve the problem. Defaulting on debts wouldnt be the end of the world but it should only be a last resort and could potentially have pretty disastrous consequences.

That only leaves two options, going by the poll but those are only really fiscal measures in cutting spending or raising taxes. I guess it should really be a mixture of both. The trouble with cutting spending is that it never seems to be done in the right places. The coalition is cutting billions which is having a detrimental effect to millions in the public sector who are at risk of losing their jobs and their incomes and it destroys consumer confidence and consumption. At the same time by wading into a civil war in Libya we've already spent £200m and the total cost could go up to £1billion the way things are going. It's insane, and it's a conflict we have no right to get involved in and Amnesty havent evend found any evidence for a lot of the accusations made against Gaddafi that was used as a pretext for intervention. Afghanistan & Iraq; another two wars which have cost billions and achieved nothing, at least we're basically out of Iraq now, Afghanistan is a mess and we'll never succeed there just as the Soviets failed in the 80s and we failed in the 19th century. It's that sort of thing where we should be cutting spending, how we can keep pumping money into these pointless endeavours while going on about the need to cut back and making thousands unemployed is beyond me.

Taxes are a difficult one. Again in the UK they can afford to cut corporation tax which is all well and good but then they say raising VAT is basically a necessity. I think it's questionable how much good a cut to VAT would do but raising it is just an attack on the less wealthy considering it's a regressive tax. Ideally the megarich would be taxed more but I dont think it's really feasible and it's not even certain that the top 50% rate is beneficial to the economy because people will just find ways to avoid paying it by storing money overseas or by moving abroad themselves to tax havens like Switzerland, and then it discourages people from making enough money to actually pay that 50% in the first place.

You could even cut taxes or increase spending to stimulate growth but the deficit we have in this country is too large for that really and we don't want to continously build up debt which will be burden for decades with increasinhly high levels of interest, I think we already spend something like £50billion a year on interest, it's ridiculous. Although certain taxes could be altered; I like what the Coalition is doing here raising the personal tax allowance so the amount you earn before you actually have to pay income tax increases, that should be an incentive for people to find work and get rid of the unemployment trap which should benefit the economy.

And then there are certain other policies, you could always reduce welfare benfits to incentivise more people to find work and increase the governments tax revenue and decrease its spending. Increasing interest rates is another option which should decrease the high inflation we've got atm but it also carries the risk of us falling back into recession.

So basically.. I dont know, it's a diificult problem to deal with and there are no easy solutions, I do think really that spending does need to be cut but they could go about it in a much better way. And then, if all else fails, then defaulting on the debt might prove to be a viable last resort, I wouldnt be surprised if it happens in Greece. Didnt intend that to be so long, it was basically the same question I was asked in my economics exam :laugh:

Raising corporate tax rates, income tax rates and inheritance tax rates to Wilson era levels and introducing a 100% bonus tax would have been a very good start given that it would all come down hard on the very people that got us into this shambles in the first place. The banks, the financial sector and the upper middle-classes overwhelmingly responsible for overextending their credit during the housing bubble. If that doesn't give you a government surplus, I don't know what will.

Then reduce government expenditure not by cutting frontline services, but by radically cutting down the number of administrators in the NHS, abolishing PFI's (the coalition government has has increased them), capping local authority wages, closing Foundation Hospitals and private care services and bringing them back under direct NHS control and renationalising the railways (government spending on rail transport has paradoxically doubled since they were privatised).

It is a hard one but for me raising taxes by an x percentage level for a period is the only fair way forward.

I know a lot has been made of welfare and benefit reforms too,it is likely benefits have risen over the last few years to reasonable levels,so, to make it that all are in this together then, with a percentage increase in tax which would mean the lowest band of tax rates would rise but those on high earnings would pay more,also with the various forms of levys and taxes that could have been put in place that have been said in above other posts would make the Banks and financial institutions cough up more too.

In addition to that also there could have been a small percentage cut across the board for all on benefits too.
For the period of bringing the deficit down that would have appeared to have had all of the Country in it together.Then things could have been changed again in better times.

Certain welfare reforms are already being seen as to likely be going to cost more to do than they will save so I cannot see this govt getting the deficit totally cleared by 2015, which was their manifesto commitment and reasoning behind the savage cuts being made in all areas.

I personally thought Labours plan of cutting the deficit by half in 4 years was too ambitious,I now see it as a likely impossibility for this govt to now clear it all by 2015.

Raise taxes. Cutting mean destroying peoples jobs and destroying valuable services. Everyone of us needs to realise you can't have something for nothing. Even though the Tories love to spread the belief you can have lower taxes and good public services at the same time.

As alway they are cynical crackpot liars.......Who love to try and bribe their way into office with tax cutting bribes for mugs who believe their incompetent logic...

China Owns You.


And they match all your nukes.

Raising taxes (for a period of say the next 5 years),although unpopular is also the most cost effective and instant way to rake in money to the treasury.

nationalise every private bank in the world

take possession of every single asset the banks have

end fractional reserve banking system forever

the huge debts that exist around the world, especially america's 14 TRILLION don't actually exist because the banks lend them money that does not even exist to begin with

then raise taxes on the rich, lower taxes on the poor and increase government spending with all the monies we got off them greedy fat bankers :elephant:

arrest the bankers as well for fraud, theft, corruption etc

I agree with the majority of what has been said. There's no point trying to slash a few million in cuts on community projects when the government is wading into yet another war that has nothing to do with them. There needs to be crackdowns on benefits. There needs to be some sort of scheme where people have to earn their benefits - many single mums come into the cafe where I work, every day and spend a fortune on food and drink because they have nothing else to do but spend their benefits whilst waiting for their child to finish school. Could the government not be taking advantage of this school time and saying to these people that they must take part in some sort of community service, doing things that the government would otherwise be paying people to do. After a while people will start to realise that they would be better off doing the same amount of hours a week in an actual job and I think people will start to realise that they can't get everything in life for free.