Foreign Affairs: Robert Greenstein: 'Prosperity Isn't Free'

Source:Foreign Affairs- This just in: people in San Francisco calling for higher taxes on themselves. Also in the news: if you go days without breathing, you could suffocate.

"A group of upper income professionals who call themselves "Tax-Us" rally in San Francisco. (Robert Galbraith / Courtesy Reuters)

Efforts to address the "fiscal cliff" -- the combination of tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts that will come into effect around the first of the new year if policymakers don't avert them -- should center around two related goals: protect the economic recovery in the short term, and promote growth, opportunity, and shared prosperity in the long term.

The most urgent short-term goal is for the United States to avoid the sizeable risk of returning to recession. If the scheduled tax"  

From Foreign Affairs

Just to talk about the photo and the caption of the cover photo of Robert Greenstein's article: people in San Francisco, perhaps especially wealthy people in San Francisco, since San Francisco is one of the wealthiest big cities in America with a very high cost of living, with the high quality of life, etc. So when even rich people there call for higher taxes and not just the hippie-leftists who are still stuck in the 1960s culturally, ideologically, and everything else, I'm not surprised by that. Now, if people in let's say Mobile, Alabama or Biloxi, Mississippi. anywhere in Utah, Nevada, or Arizona, we're calling for higher taxes on themselves and not just the man or woman standing next to them, I might be impressed by that.  

As far as the so-called fiscal cliff: if Democrats and Republicans in Congress believe that avoiding the fiscal cliff would help them politically and blaming the other side if and when we hit the cliff could hurt them politically, then a good deal will be struck. And that probably means some form of tax reform that eliminate loopholes that benefits mostly wealthy people, including wealthy people in hippie-leftist San Francisco. And you might see some agriculture and Welfare reform involving new work requirements for people receiving any form of public assistance, on the spending side of the Federal budget. Otherwise, we're headed for another recession in 2013.