[zie]

I agree, raising taxes would definitely help AND would help the US govt with their currently fiscally idiotic ways.

Unfortunately, that would imply Congress has their act together. Since they currently can't even manage to keep from defaulting the US govt on their current debt, I'm not hopeful they will stop being fiscal idiots anytime soon. I mean this to imply both political parties are fiscal idiots as far as I can tell.

[AnimalMuppet]

It's worse. Let's say Congress raises taxes, as some here advocate. All right, what's Congress going to do with the money? Have less of a deficit? Or are they going to find new things to spend it on? Congress being Congress, they're going to spend it. And that won't help with inflation, because it reroutes the money rather than removing it.

[dragonwriter]

> Let's say Congress raises taxes, as some here advocate. All right, what's Congress going to do with the money? Have less of a deficit? Or are they going to find new things to spend it on?

Probably the former; if they found new things to spend it on, they’d spend it independent of whether or not they raised taxes.

Congress understands, even if they pretend not to when it provides a public excuse for opposing popular spending that they choose to avoid (while not bothering with that pretense when they want to spend) that there is no necessary, non-self-imposed, relationship between revenue and spending when operating in your own fiat.

[zie]

Agreed, hence Congress is full of fiscal idiots. It's not new, Congress has been full of fiscal idiots for well over a decade.

[bryanlarsen]

> Congress has been full of fiscal idiots for well over a decade.

For well over 200 years. Compared to how Andrew Jackson destroyed the US economy, the current Congress is doing fairly well.

[zie]

I'm sure reasonable people could debate the timeframe ad-nauseum, but I think most people can agree, Congress in general has never been all that fiscally responsible.