Word: bigger
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...bigger issue for voters to wrestle with, though, is not what the economy can do to the presidential race but what the next President can do to the economy. Usually it's not so much. But every once in a while, like when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and Reagan in 1980, the effect can be dramatic. Reagan's policies, together with some luck and the inflation-killing zeal of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, helped the U.S. economy break out of its 1970s malaise into a new era of flexibility, innovation and growth. And this era didn...
...Economic eras don't last forever, though, and there are signs that the current slowdown is a harbinger of something bigger: an end to America's 25-year love affair with tax cuts and deregulation. A lot of the cracks that have emerged during that time, because of global economic shifts or our own neglect, have become impossible to ignore - stagnant incomes, a federal budget gone way out of balance, soaring energy prices, a once-in-a-lifetime housing crash and growing financial risks in retirement and from health care...
...rate cuts for the rich may have paid for themselves, but the 1981 tax package as a whole (which included cuts for the poor, the middle class and corporations) clearly did not. The real lesson of the 1980s was that the U.S. can get away with running far bigger deficits than anyone thought possible while still enjoying strong growth and low inflation...
...seen a bit more evidence of this in the 2000s, but it can't go on forever. There comes a point at which government debts grow so large that they start to weigh on the economy, through higher interest rates, bigger debt payments, a weaker currency, etc. Reagan and George W. Bush had the advantage of starting out with a relatively small debt as a percentage of GDP. The next President won't be quite so lucky...
...subsidize housing so heavily in the first place. The tax deduction for home-mortgage interest alone costs the government about $80 billion a year, and most of that benefit flows to the wealthiest 16% of taxpayers, according to the Tax Foundation. It also means we're subsidizing bigger houses and home-equity loans, possibly at the expense of other investments that might deliver a bigger economic bang. Money spent on a factory, a piece of equipment or a software program can pay off in higher growth and productivity. A house just sits there...