ShackledNation
Libertarian
You said it yourself. If there was a reduction in the size of government, that's what did it. You don't need to raise taxes in order to cut spending. You raise taxes if you need more funding for spending or if you want to spend more. That is not idiotic, that is simply common sense.I am not a supply side economist, so your reference is irrelevant. And the original argument was about the size of government, not the size of debt.
If you increase taxes, all else remaining the same, government will not decrease in size. You seem to be assuming that an increase in taxes will automatically result in less borrowing. But this is simply not true, as I already explained. If you aren't going to respond to my arguments, then I will not waste my time.
You're arguments are idiotic...
In fact, the closest we ever got to reducing the size of government was under Clinton, ironically enough. He raised taxes and then there WAS a push to reduce government. Defense spending went down and welfare spending flattened out.
You seem to be conflating the size of government with the size of the deficit/debt. It is possible for a very large government to have little or no debt, or a very small government to have enormous amounts of it. Higher taxes increase the amount of money the government can spend, which can not decrease government. Lower taxes decrease revenue, but if spending remains constant then government cannot be decreased simply by lowering taxes either (as you said, the money could just be borrowed). What does decrease the size of government is less spending.
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