The Big Show hits Denver, then Seattle, this week

If you live in either area (Denver or Seattle), please consider attending The Concord Coalition’s road show concerning the profligate, wasteful, overdefended, undertaxed, shamelessly bankrupt country in which we live.  In Denver, the road show will be on Tuesday, Nov 28, 2006; in Seattle, it’s on Wednesday, Nov 29.  Here’s a page with the details.

If you or a friend could simply jot down a note or two and maybe snap a few digital pictures for me, I would greatly appreciate it.  Additionally, if anyone would be willing to stand up and ask them a question, here is what I'd like somebody to ask them—primarily to get their answers onto the public record:

The vast majority of economists agree that when the economy grows faster than the debt grows, the nation gets better off financially, largely because growing tax receipts make it easier and easier to pay growing interest payments.  In short, just about every economist agrees that economic growth is very important. 

However, Concord has warned against deficits and growing debt, with little or no mention of economic growth.  But there is no evidence supporting the common assertion that deficits cause higher interest rates.  Besides that, higher tax rates reduce the after-tax funds available to private sector taxpayers for investing in economic growth. 

Presumably, though, Concord agrees that economic growth is important to our grandchildren’s future well-being, so here are my three questions:

1. Would you please name three policy ideas the Concord Coalition has advocated to enhance the economy's productivity, job-creation rate, and median income growth rate?  (...or, frankly, I'd settle for two ideas if you can't think of three, because I visited your website and couldn't find any positive ideas at all for enhancing economic growth.) 

2. If you think higher tax rates on individuals and small businesses would help the private sector grow the economy faster, I'd like to understand why, given that deficits have no effect on interest rates.

3. If you think it would be a good idea to cut the deficit by cutting national security spending again—as we did in the 1990s—I'd like to understand why you don't think that would be penny-wise and pound-foolish again—as it was in the 1990s.

I hope a few of you can attend with a friend or two.  I wish I could have attended their Austin event a few weeks ago, because I am very interested in why people with distinguished titles such as “Comptroller General” can look at our two-decade track record of low inflation and reasonably low, steady interest rates, and conclude that our current marginal tax rates are too low, and our spending on things like national security is too high.  I'm also interested in how they figure that increasing our tax rates and reducing our national security spending will improve our grandkids' future. 

Frankly, I am especially interested in somehow limiting or even negating any influence these people might have on actual governmental policy; I don't give a hoot if that puts a big dent in their fund-raising efforts, their political agenda, or somebody's future sales of a gloom-and-doom book-in-the-works. 

-----------------------
End note:
For a few more questions I’d like to hear them answer, and a little more background on my reaction to the Concord Coalition’s Our-Grandchildren-Are-Toast tour, see this article, and this article, and this article.

Comments

[Bob]

With Peterson as Pres. and Volcker on the board good luck in mounting a counter group. Maybe one could recruit the likes of a Kudlow and some other notable folks in his ilk to provide a fair and balanced argument. I'll leave that up to you.

I'm trying to figure out how to organize a counter ACLU group.

[ziggy]

3. If you think it would be a good idea to cut the deficit by cutting national security spending again—as we did in the 1990s—I'd like to understand why you don't think that would be penny-wise and pound-foolish again—as it was in the 1990s.
I wonder if you could elaborate on that at some point -- I don't see any problems with our military capabilities, they appear rather adequate and by far world's best, and on top of that I doubt any spending in the 90's would be based on an appropriate threat assessment so any extra money would likely be wasted on useless projects.

[Steve]

ziggy: "National security" is more than just military. It results from the combination of intelligence, diplomacy, military capability, and the will to use them as necessary. In the '90s, we could have used better intelligence gathering and coordination abilities, and those alone might have prevented a catastrophe or two, and maybe even a current war or two.