I’m a bit of a stickler about the difference between debt versus deficits. Politicians act as if lowering the deficit matters. Until the deficit is *ZERO*, the debt is getting worse. And it’s the debt we’re on the hook for as taxpayers, not the deficit.

I assume a growing national debt when I talk about deficits.

Deficits and surpluses year to year don’t matter. The National Debt matters. Any budget that’s going to make a serious dent in it has to produce long-term, sustainable surpluses to retire the debt early.

VRB is right to point out that this is a decades-long problem, not just a Bush v. Clinton v. Obama thing.

If you ship all your wealth producing capabilities offshore and you import oil and finished good so that wealth leaves the country and you sustain the economy through simple consumption of others production how do you intend to pay off a deficit?

Sorry but the American people get what they deserve and the hard truth is what it is.

Not bad! 49% think their income taxes are just fine or even a bit low. Except for one thing: this chart shows exactly the opposite of what it seems. Consider this: about 40-50% of Americans pay no federal income tax at all1. That’s zero dollars. I think we can safely assume that these are the people who think their taxes are about right. What this means, then, is that virtually every American who pays any income tax at all thinks they’re paying too much. There are various reasons why this might be so (a sense of unfairness regardless of amount paid, a fuzzy sense of how much they’re paying in the first place, simple bloody-mindedness, etc.) but overall it’s not exactly a testament to our collective willingness to fund the machinery of state.

I think it’s clear… People who actually pay taxes think they’re too high.

You say:

I have been paying the same tax rate or percentage of taxes per my income, while the national debt has more than quadrupled. This has been since 1979. I can’t see the debt doubling in ten years having that much of an effect on the average taxpayer.

We’re coming to a tipping point where the debt level is unsustainable given total government tax intake (including SS and Medicare taxes). Between the upcoming end to Social Security surpluses, estimated now to be as soon as 2011, and the sudden misgivings expressed by the Chinese and other foreign debt holders, the borrowing ability of the Federal Government is about to be constrained.

Once that happens, the Federal Government can only tax the money from the people or have the Federal Reserve print more, extracting wealth from the people via the “inflation tax”.

Libertarians have been talking about the debt for a long time, but now the situation is so much more impending that some American taxpayers of are reacting more viscerally. As the fiscal situation of the Federal Government deteriorates while the Bush-Obama spending binge continues, more people will start to see the trouble we’re in.

The next few years will not be pretty for the American taxpayer, the American tax consumer, or the economy at large.

Its interesting that now the conservatives and liberterians have a cause that they will protest for. They were certainly missing in action 50 years ago.

Fortunately, I don’t expect these idiots to last much longer. The protests we saw today are the bare beginning, I suspect.