Word: trillion
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...proposals for an energy tax, which is to give the money back to people by lowering the payroll tax. The payroll tax, or FICA, collects about 15% of your wages or salary - half from you and half from your employer. It is expected to bring in close to a trillion dollars in 2009. Using our windfall from plummeting crude-oil prices alone, we could cut the FICA tax by more than half. Including other forms of energy would bring in even more. (See pictures...
...comes down to this: in the terrible storm of economic misery, we suddenly have a half-trillion-dollar windfall. As unemployment heads toward double digits, we can use this found money to encourage people to create jobs, or we can use it to encourage people to use more gasoline. It's a pretty easy choice, don't you think...
...sober-minded and effective. U.S. officials privately believe that their Chinese counterparts know there is no going back on the currency. Perhaps the more pressing topic of discussion at the meeting this week was the possibility of even more government stimulus coming in China - on top of the 4 trillion RMB ($588 billion) package China announced to great fanfare a month ago. Two weeks later, Beijing upped the ante with an interest-rate cut and tax rebates, and now there are unconfirmed reports that an additional spending plan is being prepared as China's economic data continue to weaken. That...
...economists (and the Economist) think the downside is obvious, but it obviously isn't obvious, or we wouldn't have run up what seemed until a few weeks ago to be the very large deficits of the past 30 years. Unless there is a downside, why stop at a trillion? Why choose between cutting taxes and spending on infrastructure? Heck, let's do both. Party...
...answer is yes, there is a downside. Even though amounts this large inevitably seem like toy money, it's a real trillion dollars we are talking about spending. Even if we spend the money wisely (on bridges to somewhere), we or future generations will still have to pay it off, with interest. Or, more likely, we will inflate it away, along with the life savings of those who were foolish enough to save all their lives. It's just that the downside of doing nothing is worse. It's an easy choice, I guess. But let's not pretend that...