On balance, President Obama may be advocating policies that are more progressive within cohort, but no one can say for sure, in part because we don't know all the details of Romney's tax and entitlement plans. Nor do we know how the President's plans to curb entitlement spendings will work even in principle, let alone in practice.
But the real problem with both sets of policies is the burdens they impose on our children. The U.S. currently has a fiscal gap of $211 trillion, where the fiscal gap measures the difference between all projected future spending commitments (including servicing the debt) and all projected future tax payments -- all valued in the present. This fiscal gap is calculated based on CBO projections and grew by $6 trillion last year! This is the true measure of the government bill we are passing to our kids. Spending more on oldsters or taxing them less means hitting youngsters with a higher lifetime net tax bill.That's Larry Kotlikoff, who says he'd like to be POTUS to put a stop to America's child abuse of several decades now. His claim is that our ongoing policy of taking savings and investment from young productive Americans to give ever larger consumption to older (and richer) Americans has resulted in lower capital stock, and thus lower incomes for those who are young today. Presumably resulting in lower consumption when they become the oldsters relying on the beneficience of the next generations.
How's this for a bumper sticker;
As a candidate for the Presidency (see www.kotlikoff2012.org andwww.americanselect.org), I've put generational equity front and center. With the help of some of the best economists in the world, I've designed policies that eliminate our fiscal gap, without pulling the rug from beneath the elderly.
As I say on my site, "Our Kids Are Us." Unfortunately, for the two [major] parties, it's "Our Toys are Us."
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