{"id":20893,"date":"2010-07-23T15:51:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-23T15:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/michael_cembalest_on_the_unfunded_entitlements_that_are_the_heart_of_the_u\/"},"modified":"2010-07-23T15:51:48","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T15:51:48","slug":"michael_cembalest_on_the_unfunded_entitlements_that_are_the_heart_of_the_u","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=20893","title":{"rendered":"Michael Cembalest on the Unfunded Entitlements that are the Heart of the U.S. Budget Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And how might we pay for such absurd obligations? Here\u2019s Cembalest:<\/p>\n<p>    * By 2020, the average EU country would need to raise its tax rate to 55 percent of national income to pay promised benefits<br \/>\n    * The U.S. could fund its shortfall by doubling the 15.3 percent payroll tax on employers and employees (forever)<br \/>\n    * Alternatively, the U.S. could reduce discretionary spending by 80%, on things like education, defense and environmental protection.  Why so high?  There\u2019s not enough discretionary spending left (the OMB estimates that mandatory spending will make up 71% of government expenditures by 2016)<br \/>\n    * Of course, the other option would be the printing press (inflation), which would be worse given how much would be needed<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/paul.kedrosky.com\/archives\/2010\/07\/unfunded_entitl.html\">Read it all and take a careful look at those charts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And how might we pay for such absurd obligations? Here\u2019s Cembalest: * By 2020, the average EU country would need to raise its tax rate to 55 percent of national income to pay promised benefits * The U.S. could fund<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=20893\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,50,209,670,149,151,673,587,669,584],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-politics","category-international-news-commentary","category-americau-s-a","category-budget","category-economy","category-politics-in-general","category-social-security","category-taxes","category-the-national-deficit","category-the-u-s-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}