Zachriel: Perhaps it might be worth pointing out that the spending side of the equation is sometimes neglected. But I'm not sure it constitutes an actual argument.

I was pointing out that you expressed yourself in a way that encourages the kind of thinking that leads to spending being fundamentally neglected. And it wasn't an argument, it was just an observation.

I admit that very few people would agree with me. That's because the idea that taxation doesn't need to be justified is pervasive. More's the pity. It's led to our current state, where governments at all levels are seen as functioning as a two step process: first, get money, then spend it. This decoupling leaves the amount of taxation an arbitrary decision. We see in your statement: debt is the problem, taxes solve it, so keep taxes high. Taxation stops being the measure of government control it really is and becomes a practical matter: how much taxation will the populace stand?

don provan: The point is that all spending needs to be justified sufficiently to warrant the corresponding taxation.

We have no disagreement on that point. What started this was:

You generally run up debt by cutting revenue* (*while maintaining the same level of spending).

We can, in fact, analyze the effects of revenue on a fixed level of spending, and we can, in fact, reasonably say that a proposed tax cut may lead to deficits if that proposal doesn't also include spending cuts. Some, on the American Right, have claimed otherwise.

Perhaps it might be worth pointing out that the spending side of the equation is sometimes neglected. But I'm not sure it constitutes an actual argument.

Zachriel: The sentence makes sense. You generally run up debt by cutting revenue* (*while maintaining the same level of spending). So when business drops off, the balance sheet moves negatively**. This can then lead to cuts in expenditures as a consequence of the decrease in receipts. It depends on the variable we wish to treat as the independent variable.

This analysis is of a business. Governments are not the same. Revenues are different from taxes in a very significant way.

Cut the wrong spending and it may very well cut revenues, e.g. no police, no commerce.

The point isn't that all spending it bad. The point is that all spending needs to be justified sufficiently to warrant the corresponding taxation.

Power will consolidate. It's necessary that this be balanced by strong, democratic institutions that can address critical issues before anarchy ensues.

Anarchy is your only concern? I think any modern government can avoid anarchy. I'm more worried that they'll do it by reducing our individual freedoms. And when you say, "The problem here is that we're not taxing enough, so we're going deeper and deeper in debt," you are marching in that direction, the one that presupposes that we have to justify the money we keep rather than the government having to justify the money it takes.

By the way, you are confusing libertarianism with anarchy. They are very different. You are correct that modern societies are well beyond any possibility of adopting libertarian principles. But that doesn't mean we should all throw up our hands and give in to the trend no matter where it might lead.

A little known fact for a long time, but now on Wiki:

Aldrin is a Presbyterian, and is known for his statements about God. After landing on the moon, Aldrin radioed earth with these words: "I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way." He received Communion on the surface of the Moon, but kept it secret because of a lawsuit brought by Madalyn Murray O'Hair over the reading of Genesis on Apollo 8.[13] Aldrin, a church elder, used a pastor's home Communion kit given to him by Dean Woodruff and recited words used by his pastor at Webster Presbyterian Church. [14][15] Webster Presbyterian Church, a local congregation in Webster, Texas (a Houston suburb near the Johnson Space Center) possesses the chalice used for communion on the moon, and commemorates the event annually on the Sunday closest to July 20.[16]

I will be the first to say, that some of the individuals I've met through the NPA I would consider cranks of the first order!

But there are some bright minds and interesting questions that have been put forward through the NPA. Some are long time university professors, most notably Domina Spencer who got a PhD in math and physics from MIT at age 21 and has been a professor ever since at University of Connecticut! I believe she is setting world records. Also there have been creationists who have been an integral part of the NPA like professor Thomas Barnes.

I don't know how these guy pulled it off, but some elements of the NPA are helping organize something at the John's Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (JHU APL). Recall that it was Lee Spetner of JHU APL that was among the first academics from a university to openly declare he was a creationist (see his book Not by Chance endorsed by JHU Nobel Laureate Chrisitan Anfinsen).

The announcement of the 4 day conference is here:
http://ias-spes.org/SPESIF.html

It was through this element of the NPA I learned about the Laithwaite experiment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Laithwaite

Laithwaite was a respected professor of electrical engineering:

Eric Roberts Laithwaite (14 June 1921 – 27 November 1997) was an English engineer, principally known for his development of the linear induction motor and Maglev [magnetic levitation] rail system.

See this article:

http://www.rexresearch.com/laithwat/laithw1.htm

London (AP) ~ A British scientist said yesterday he is on the threshold of inventing an antigravity motor that could fly a manned spaceship to the stars using nuclear fuel the size of a pea.

Eric Laithwaite, professor of heavy electrical engineering at London's Imperial College of Science and Technology, said the motor is based on the gyroscope, a rapidly spinning top that defies gravity. Gyroscopes already are used to guide spaceships.

"The motor is not easy to explain. If it was, others would have tried to produce one by now," said Laithwaite, who described himself as an astro engineer.

Laithwaite began working on the motor about six months ago after Edwin Rickman, who works with an electrical engineering firm, came to him with the idea. Rickman had patented it after he said it came to him in recurring dreams. Laithwaite incorporated in the device ideas of another amateur inventor, Alex Jones.

Although Laithwaite is far from the production stage with his motor to defy gravity, the 53-year old professor demonstrated his principle Friday at the Royal Institution at London.

Inside a box he brought before his distinguished audience were two electrically driven gyroscopes, each placed on a central pivot. Laithwaite made the gyroscopes rotate at high speed, and they rose into the air on the arms until they reached a curved rail that pushed them down again. The process then repeated itself.

With the two gyroscopes motionless, the box weighed 20 pounds on an ordinary kitchen scale. With the gyroscopes spinning, the contraption weighed 15 pounds.

Laithwaite said the loss of weight corresponded to the gravity loss produced by the spinning gyroscopes. Theoretically, the machine could produce weightlessness, Laithwaite said. A spaceship with his device could be blasted from the earth's gravitational field with conventional rocket fuel, Laithewaite said. Then, without friction to hamper the anti-gravity engine, nuclear power or solar energy could begin operating the gyroscopes and to drive the vehicle to other solar systems, he said.

Laithwaite is the inventor of the electrical linear motor capable of propelling a device through strong magnetic currents. He said the antigravity motor also could be adapted to drive ships and land vehicles silently but added: "Man is not interested in traveling horizontally. He always wants to go up."

Laithwaite said the antigravity motor is based on electromagnetism and vector multiplication "too complicated to explain."

Recall, that there are dissident elements that believe gravity is a form of elctromagnetism. The fact that we can't apply maxwell's equations directly to account for the lack radiation when dealing with the electron's centripetal acceleration resulted in attempts at reconcilation with such things as Feynman's Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED). Another attempt at reconciliation is Stochastic Electro Dynamics. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_electrodynamics

In theoretical physics, Stochastic electrodynamics (SED) refers to a theory which posits that the interaction of elementary particles with the vacuum radiation field, or zero-point field, is ultimately responsible for various familiar quantum phenomena. For the more common treatments of these phenomena, see quantum mechanics or individual references.

…
Brief history
Stochastic Electrodynamics (SED) is a term for a collection of research efforts of many different styles based on the ansatz that there exists random electromagnetic radiation with a power spectrum equal to times the frequency, where is the reduced Planck constant. This particular type of background is identical to what in the usual formulation of quantum mechanics (QM) is the quantized ground state of free electromagnetic radiation, the quantum vacuum state. Thus, it can be said that SED is the inverse of QM. The main goal of SED is to rationalize QM by attributing quantum effects to this electromagnetic background.

Internet culture
The proposals of Haisch and Rueda have been eagerly promoted at many websites, for example, ZPower.com,[specify] by new energy fans, who hope that the notion of zero point energy might ultimately provide no cost "energy from the vacuum", thereby solving many current problems in contemporary human society. Others[who?] claim that the work of Haisch, Rueda, and Puthoff holds out hope of developing a reactionless drive which can be used to enable humans to visit far distant regions of the universe.[4][5][citation needed] NASA continues to make assessments. [6][7] In the usual interpretation of vacuum energy it is not possible to use it to do work.[8]

Fictional References

Arthur C. Clarke describes a "SHARP drive" (for Sakharov, Haisch, Rueda and Puthoff) in his 1997 novel "3001: The Final Odyssey". This follows speculation in (non-technical) papers by Haisch and Rueda on the control of inertia using SED principles.

Controlling Ineria? Hmmmmmmmmmm…..

Alan Fox: There is never a double blind experiment to check out the untried theories, only history to pick over the bones of the failed policies!

Indeed. So let's review the bidding, and do the best we can:
Reagan era: cuts taxes, national debt increased.
Bush I/Clinton era: raised taxes, national debt decreased.
Bush II era: cuts taxes, national debt increased.

To be fair, that is debt as a percentage of GDP. In absolute dollars, the debt has been increasing monotonically (although Clinton was able to achieve an on-the-books surplus — that is, excluding intragovernmental transfers — in his final budget)

And to answer dan provan's anticipated objection: yes, this ignores what was going on on the spending side. Bush II was notoriously unconcerned about controlling spending; the PAYGO discipline of his predecessors (beginning with Dad!) was abandoned. The advice of Nobel-laureate economists, and his Treasury Secretary, to curtail deficits was ignored. As measured by his unwillingness to use the veto pen, he was one of the most liberal presidents in modern times. He started a couple of wars and chose not to raise the taxes necessary to pay for them, unwilling as he was to follow the prudent example of his fiscally-conservative father, whose conscience obliged him to raise taxes to help offset the cost of the S&L Crisis (more lovely fruits of deregulated commerce btw). Or perhaps he was unwilling to pay the consequences his father paid for that reluctant betrayal of an ill-advised promise to the party's base. "No new taxes." Read between his lips.

Zachriel: There is a long term political movement in the U.S. that deficits don't matter, meaning you can maintain spending while simultaneously cutting taxes.

Vice President Cheney to Treasury Secretary Oneill, December 2002: ""You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

Modern governance requires police, military, laws concerning property, safety, banking insurance and regulation, food and drug inspection. All advanced societies have such institutions. And you also need some sort of social safety net or you don't have a stable political environment. Otherwise, every time there was an economic calamity (which were more frequent and more dangerous before institutions such as FDIC, the Fed and other regulatory bodies), there would be millons of unemployed on the street. Millions of U.S. veterans were educated and housed after WWII leading to the greatest period of prosperity in history. Compare to the neglect unemployed veterans experienced after WWI.

Power will consolidate. It's necessary that this be balanced by strong, democratic institutions that can address critical issues before anarchy ensues.

don provan: Can't you get it? For your sentence to make sense, tax cuts should be the asterisk, not spending.

The sentence makes sense. You generally run up debt by cutting revenue* (*while maintaining the same level of spending). So when business drops off, the balance sheet moves negatively**. This can then lead to cuts in expenditures as a consequence of the decrease in receipts. It depends on the variable we wish to treat as the independent variable.

(**Nor does deficit spending necessarily lead to debts—if the entity is spending from savings. But most people know that, and it probably isn't necessary to repeatedly mention it parenthetically.)

don provan: Yes, I understand spending can be reduced, but when you blame the increased debt on cutting taxes, you are speaking as if spending isn't the fundamental problem. All I'm saying.

That indicates it is not a mere semantic distinction you are drawing. You consider spending a "fundamental problem", even when spending may be an important solution by generating a stable business environment that enables everything else to happen. Cut the wrong spending and it may very well cut revenues, e.g. no police, no commerce.

Were revenues higher or lower than they would have been without the tax cuts?

Without a parallel universe for comparison, how will we ever know? This is the joy of economics and politics. There is never a double blind experiment to check out the untried theories, only history to pick over the bones of the failed policies!

(Bit like ID really!)

Zachriel:…running up trillions in debt with tax cuts* to the wealthiest Americans during times of economic expansion was a bad idea (*while maintaining or increasing levels of spending).

…overflowing a bucket by plugging holes* (*while maintaining or increasing the amount of water you pour into it). Plugging holes doesn't overflow the bucket. Can't you get it? For your sentence to make sense, tax cuts should be the asterisk, not spending.

The Clinton Administration made substantial cuts in welfare spending as part of the effort to bring the budget back into line, so there is no question that it can be addressed on the spending side.

Yes, I understand spending can be reduced, but when you blame the increased debt on cutting taxes, you are speaking as if spending isn't the fundamental problem. All I'm saying.

There was an increase in revenues during the Bush Administration, but not nearly sufficient to close the fiscal gap.

Were revenues higher or lower than they would have been without the tax cuts?