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Deficits and Debt Input

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Write a brief essay on" Deficits and Debt��"Do We Spend Too Much"

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Solution Summary

The principle of supply and demand requires a review of the theories of consumption and earning power. Does government spend and consume too much? Are businesses and consumers guilty of the same behavior. We attempt to answer these questions within this discussion --- decide for yourself!

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We probably need to take a three pronged approach to this question. The three prongs would include government spending, spending by business, and consumer spending. Can we generalize and ask ourselves if each entity spends too much, and we would probably conclude that we do spend inordinately. But we probably need to dig a bit deeper to determine why and how we spend, and what the economic implications are.

First, from a government perspective, we all agree that the government spends far beyond its means. And many believe we may be another Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, etc. in the making. The government currently runs a deficit exceeding $16 billion, so the emphasis is on spending too much, with issues surrounding making cuts in the budget which will (painfully) affect many areas, but appear to be focused upon seniors and the middle class. For all of the talk about protecting the middle class by taxing higher income earners, the sad truth is that there are not enough high income earners to offset the amounts needed by the government to bring the budget into some semblance of order. And seniors are being viewed as drains on an already taxed system of medical expenses and social security payments due to the fact that more are living longer, and requiring more in the way of health care. All of this is occurring as prices increase, and economic pressures to survive increase.

So what is the answer to the perceived over spending? Should the government cut back spending in this period of economic uncertainty? Ot should it look for ways to spend in order to strengthen the economy? There are two schools of thought here: one is it should reduce spending (the Republican view) in order to reduce the effect and intrusion of government into our lives. The other is that government spending is necessary to help get the economy stronger and reducing unemployment, as well as instilling trust and integrity into what is perceived as a failed economic model (or seriously flawed).

But we could also argue that our representatives are focused on the wrong things. Perhaps now would be a good time to focus on producing revenue to offset the need for higher spending. Areas such as taxing on line transactions would yield millions/billions over the next 10 years (Ebay has forecast e-commerce going to a $200 trillion market segment by 2020). ...

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