, Columnist
Is It the Spending or the Taxes? Mostly the Spending, But ...
The likely future cost of Medicare is going to force the U.S. to make some tough choices.
We're not getting younger.
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The U.S. appears to face a future of large, chronic federal budget deficits. Is that because taxes are too low or because spending is too high?
In one sense, the question can only be answered with a value judgment -- possibly but not necessarily informed by economic evidence -- about the appropriate size of government. A commonly used alternative, though, is just to look at past taxing and spending and see whether current or expected levels are way out of line. The choice of time period is to some extent its own value judgment, of course, but it has become common practice in the U.S. to look at post-World War II averages to get some sense of what the "norm" is.