{"id":6621,"date":"2013-10-15T10:29:32","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T17:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6621"},"modified":"2013-10-15T10:29:32","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T17:29:32","slug":"what-are-they-fighting-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-are-they-fighting-over\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are They Fighting Over?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The deficit this year may fall to below $700 billion, but that is still huge at a time of a record near $17 trillion in debt, and comes despite a supposedly recovering economy and more revenue, despite recent sequestration cuts, despite dramatic \"Apples_apple_pie\"gains in U.S. domestic energy production, despite the return of the Clinton-era tax hikes to the top brackets, and despite the end of the war in Iraq and the wind down in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Wars, tax cuts on the wealthy, and out-of-control defense spending were all in the past variously cited as causing these huge deficits. In fact, the more compelling causes were always chronically slow economic growth, out-of-control federal spending, and the exemption of nearly half of America from paying any income tax at all.<\/p>\n

No wonder we have a deadlock, when the best medicine for restoring fiscal health\u2014stronger GDP growth through suspending Obamacare, opening up federal gas and oil leasing, cutting back on new regulations, and reforming the tax code\u2014is apparently seen as worse than the disease of huge annual deficits.<\/p>\n

So we will continue to fight over redistributing a shrinking pie, in hopes that now institutionalized near-zero interest rates will keep allowing us to service a rising debt that otherwise would have crushed us long ago.<\/p>\n

The winners at the top in all this are Wall Street that does not have to do much, as hundreds of billions of dollars flock to it in search of any return at all, and, at the bottom of the pyramid, those receiving increased entitlements and federal assistance who pay no income taxes\u2014while the bigger losers are most everyone else in between, struggling with steep gas, food, and power costs, but especially the vanishing upper-middle, job-creating, entrepreneurial classes who are paying more taxes, receiving no returns on their savings accounts, and facing ever more federal fees and regulations.<\/p>\n

No wonder a pyramidal U.S. is beginning to look like a chic Palo Alto or Upper West Side elite atop a romanticized and avoided underclass, with a shrinking and caricatured class in-between.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO’s The Corner\u00a0 The deficit this year may fall to below $700 billion, but that is still huge at a time of a record near $17 trillion in debt, and comes despite a supposedly recovering economy and more revenue, despite recent sequestration cuts, despite dramatic gains in U.S. domestic energy production, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[49],"tags":[42,279,63,40,213,474,1020],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1IN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":173,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-kingdom-of-fairness\/","url_meta":{"origin":6621,"position":0},"title":"The Kingdom of Fairness","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We are still borrowing more than $1 trillion a year. Barack Obama has added more than $5 trillion to the national debt in just his first term alone. Such massive borrowing is unsustainable. Someone somehow at some time has to pay it back.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2590,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-psychology-of-debt-obamas-rendezvous-with-political-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":6621,"position":1},"title":"The Psychology of Debt: Obama’s Rendezvous with Political Reality","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Debt Matters Over the last two decades it became an article of popular faith that budget deficits did not matter that much. Conservatives began to talk of annual red-ink in vague terms of percentages of the gross domestic product rather than in real billions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2009"","block_context":{"text":"July 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/july-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1175,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/deficits-and-depression\/","url_meta":{"origin":6621,"position":2},"title":"Deficits and Depression","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We will learn in November just how angry the public is about a lot of things, from higher taxes to massive unemployment. But the popular uproar pales in comparison to the sense of humiliation that we Americans are quite broke. In 2008, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2010"","block_context":{"text":"October 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/october-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1426,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/moral-equivalence-is-moral-evasion\/","url_meta":{"origin":6621,"position":3},"title":"Moral Equivalence Is Moral Evasion","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The failure of the Congressional budget \u201csuper-committee\u201d to address our geometrically expanding debt and deficits should surprise no one. From the beginning the committee was political theater designed to create the illusion of action when the will to act is missing. Unfortunately, this perennial\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6638,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-heed-thyself\/","url_meta":{"origin":6621,"position":4},"title":"Obama, Heed Thyself","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"He used to know some important things. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Republicans and Democrats are still name-calling in their arguments over the government shutdown, out-of-control federal spending, and the implementation of Obamacare. Yet if both sides would agree to just follow the earlier advice of President Obama,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/3544735027_8a0ac7b28a-201x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-6-responds-to-bush-reconsidered\/","url_meta":{"origin":6621,"position":5},"title":"Angry Reader #6 Responds to “Bush Reconsidered”","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Angry Reader #6 wrote: \u201cVDH Trash\u201d VDH do you actually believe\u00a0this? I have to doubt your sanity. So many examples but I think the breezy dismissal of Iraq, not mentioning torture, the health of the economy circa 2009 and the Bush tax cuts relationship to the deficits are the real\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6623,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6621\/revisions\/6623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}