Economically, long-term joblessness means fewer dollars for consumption. For deficit control, it means fewer taxpayers contributing to government revenues and tens of billions more spent on unemployment insurance.
In the West, if a city faces financial difficulties, it'll go bankrupt. But in China, cities will be subsidised by the Ministry of Finance. So some small- and medium-sized cities aren't worried about going bankrupt. They figure the central government will help them out.
The massive debt we have racked up to finance our wasteful government is pulling down growth today. Gross debt over 90 percent of GDP weakens growth now. Not tomorrow - now.
Giving subsidies is a two-edged sword. Once you give it, it's very hard to take away subsidies. There's a political cost to taking away subsidies.
The fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear. … I think that you’d be hard pressed to find any set of assumptions under which Mexican immigrants are a net fiscal plus, but equally hard pressed to make the burden more than a fraction of a percent of G.D.P.
If we have an economic crisis in the Western world it's because the government makes up 50 percent or more of the economy. This is a cancer that is taking away people's freedom.
The welfare state may be well-intentioned, but it is a Ponzi scheme
I don't want to leave my successor and my children to pay for France's debt.
While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system.
States with high and rising tax burdens are more likely to suffer economic decline; those with low and falling tax burdens are more likely to enjoy strong economic growth.
By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.
Farm subsidies are a waste of money.
The national debt will have increased by approximately 50% in just eight years! We will have created a new unfunded entitlement - disability and health care benefits for the huge number of disabled veterans returning from the Iraq war.
I'm concerned about the cost, just like everybody else. There's no question that we have an obligation to help the people of Louisiana and Mississippi to rebuild.
All taxation is an evil, but heavy taxes, indiscriminately levied on every everything are one of the greatest curses that can afflict a people
The goof man, in dealing with his people, taxes them with luxury.
Aging bodies are fiscal black holes into which you can pour endless amounts of money.
I don't like paying 50 per cent of tax.
For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government . . . costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching.
Odisha faces natural calamities almost every year. The assistance we get from the Centre is mostly for temporary restoration of infrastructure. We have to spend a lot from state's own funds to work for the long-term. This puts too much stress on our finances. Precisely for this reason, Odisha should be considered for special category status.
I have young kids. The fiscal burden that will be imposed on them is going to depend primarily on whether we tackle this looming problem in our health care system - with rising costs that don't seem, by the way, to be necessarily associated with higher quality. That is the key burden that they will face.
In fact, our monthly trade deficit figure is so huge it equals the entire annual budget of our Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans fought to make us free from foreign tyranny, but the new tyranny is taking a different form.
You talk to any of the job creators, and they'll tell you one of the things that concerns them the most is the debt. And so high levels of indebtedness are going to lead to high levels of taxation, which lead to high level of unemployment.
The United States is at a critical juncture in time. Our government is riddled with historic debt, and the limited resources of philanthropic and non-profit efforts cannot meet the scale of social challenges we face with necessary force.
I might say that in retrospect, looking at where the community college system is today, I think we may have gone too far. The community college system is so big, so broad, so consuming of tax money.
