That decline ended in 2001 following the collapse of the dot-com bubble and rising unemployment in the resulting recession. By 2003 the debt-to-GDP ratio had risen to 61.7%. Many blame the Bush tax cuts for adversely impacting federal revenues, causing the debt to spiral upwards. But that is just not true. Federal revenues declined by almost 12% in the early years of the decade, but when the tax cuts fully kicked in in 2003, the economy began to grow strongly again and federal revenues increased 44% in the next four years, while unemployment fell to 4.2% from 6.2%. Federal outlays in those four years increased by only 26.4%, and while the debt-to-GDP ratio increased to 64.8% by 2007, that was still well below what it had been in 1994.
A key question, raised all the time, is: "What impact did the Bush tax cuts have on the economy and debt picture"? Did the reduced rates induce growth and increase revenues? Did the reduced tax rates just deprive our treasury of money it should have had but didn't, thus accelerating the debt building cycle?
No one knows. Everyone guesses, and says they know the answer, but they don't. They say what they need to in order to manipulate, but think it through; how could they know the answer to such a complex question? By what means could they prove their assertions? They can't, but strangely, they don't need to because there seems to be an unending appetite for speculation. We apparently want to be lied to, because we listen when people tell us they know stuff they cannot possibly know.
This is another manifestation of the pretense of knowledge, which distracts us from the fact that clueless clowns are perfectly happy to tell us what they think they know even if they don't know any such thing.
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