Neoteny wrote:Well, I'm not really talking about politicians (after all, they are all the same, amirite?), nor am I interested in getting into Libertarian/underpants gnome economics (here's a chicken and egg scenario for you: which came first, wanting to pay less taxes or the economic concept wherein instituting that "I wanna" conveniently magicks the economy into perfect working order?). Greek seemed to be discussing personal ideas so I'm going to stick to that level.
Greek took his ideas of the economy and just reversed them, in a textbook example of othering. He wants reduced taxes, therefore others want increased taxes. This is somewhat amusing since it doesn't really even mesh with the scenario earlier in his post. His goal is actually reduced taxes; from the tgd perspective, other people actually just want increased spending. The taxes are just a means to that end, much like cuts are a means to reduce taxes. If government could do what they do and reduce taxes without cuts, Greek would probably be ok with that (assuming no crazy deficits or what have you are created). I'm sure this issue stems in its entirety from trying to reduce complex ideas into bizarre chicken and egg parables (the sort of dishonesty NS intentionally strives to achieve), which is why my initial response was so simple and one-offish.
Oh, I see. Yeah, I don't follow the chicken-egg parable.
To critique your second paragraph, it can't be true that reduced taxes would follow from spending cuts. The government would simply incur less of a deficit; therefore, it would have to borrow less money per year. I'm not sure what exactly TGD's perspective on this is, and this criticism may not be against your view in particular, but I felt the need to point something about spending, taxes, and deficits.
(Deficit spending, i.e. borrowing money to make up for the difference between one's revenue and expenditures, has been roughly $1 trillion per year for the past four years. The budget cuts so far have been in the 10s of billions, maybe less than $50bn on an annual basis).