‘If only the rich paid their taxes…’
‘If we put illegal immigrants in 4-star hotels instead of 5-star hotels the country wouldn’t have these problems’
I looked online to see what opinions there were about the U.S. defaulting on its debt. There were well-thought-out views and there were views such as above.
The quoted views are emotional conclusions. If only people would do a fact check before making statements such as these.
With respect to the rich; the rich do pay more taxes than any other group, and by more, I mean not only number of dollars but percentages as well. That’s not to deny there are some deductions (loopholes if you prefer) that should be eliminated.
What about those illegals destroying government budgets because we spend so much money on them? It is easy to blame this group. What we spend on illegal immigrants is small compared to government spending on defense, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. We must address these programs if we hope to get control of our government’s dangerous fiscal condition, by which I mean its debt.
I cite these examples to illustrate how the left and right use scapegoats. The fact is that under Democratic rule we get $2 trillion dollar deficits and under Republican rule we get the same.
One of the well-thought-out online views about U.S. debt is from the University of Pennsylvania business school. It concluded we have maybe 20 years to get our fiscal house in order to avoid the financial catastrophe of debt default. Another is a Brookings Institute survey of the debt and how serious our problem is.
The government can avoid default for a time by creating more money. That is, of course, a catastrophe; it is simply a postponed default that creates conditions such as Zimbabwe and The Weimar Republic experienced.