Draginol (our gracious host here at JU) has written several great articles about spending in general and the impact of taxes on businesses and people that others might label as "rich."
For the most part those articles sum up that there's not an infinite supply of money to be taken away from the people and used by the government, even if the money is going to be used on the people's behalf. The more the government takes away, the more the inefficiencies of how the government works comes into play and more of the money is wasted as the beast keeps feeding itself on the fruit of the people's labor.
We must be careful in what we spend our money on. We have to spend it where the returns will be the greatest and where it will help potentially eliminate needs for money in the future.
Unfortunately though there are things that as a society we should be doing, and things that we should spend money on, even if everyone doesn't agree with the idea of it. The space program as an example. Some look at it as a waste while others that investigate things a bit realize that the space program has returned so much more than what has been spent on it. If the first group had their way, there'd be no money for space exploration and the government wouldn't fund it at all. Instead it would be left to private industry to do something with, if anything at all.
There are also social programs that help serve the needs of many people along the way. If those are cut we may wind up adding costs in other areas because of the laws of unintended consequences.
Given that the U.S. budget is in the TRILLIONS of dollar currently, and that to most people millions of dollars is still a huge amount of money, it would seem obvious that we can and should be trimming some of the millions away until the budget is back to a size equal to the amount of money that comes in. A balanced budget. That's a very noble goal, and one that most of us would like to see happen.
The difference is all in how we get there. If we cut spending on the military (as liberals have tended to do in the past) we weaken our defenses and the effects are seen in places we never really think about -- places like medical care and military hospitals. We could demand that our political leaders make the cuts in other areas instead, but if they don't absolutely code things into law, then the civilian leaders in the military, along with top military brass, will make adjustments to things and still go on spending on their own priorities. If that happens, we still may wind up buying expensive toys just to keep builders back in someone's home district busy, versus spending money on salaries for our military personnel.
If we cut spending in spending on farm programs and agriculture, we could hurt small farmers (though some would argue that there really are few small farmers left and instead there are people working for large agri-businesses).
Cut spending on education and we could wind up letting ourselves fall behind in advancing technologies as our children wind up getting less equipment, books, and other tools to help improve their knowledge and understanding.
In any case, before anyone starts crying to CUT SPENDING, they better make sure to tell us where they intend to cut and they better realize that in demanding cuts they are forgoing the right to complain about the effects that those cuts have on everyone -- in fact, they should be ready to defend those cuts when others start crying about the effects the cuts have had.
