America: World's Largest Nanny State?

We aren't quite there yet, but we are getting closer to the Europeans as each day passes.

Things have gotten so bad in the U.K. income tax-wise that Andrew Lloyd Weber is worried that with a new 50% top rate, many talented people are going to up and flee the country.

Somehow, I don't think they will be coming here.

Jerome Corsi at WordNetDaily warns that we may soon be on par with the Europeans when it comes to government spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP):

Data emerging from the Congressional Budget Office and various international agencies, including the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, or OECD, indicate the Obama administration's $3.6 trillion federal budget will dramatically increase government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP, on a scale that rivals even the European Union social welfare states of France, Great Britain and Germany.

That is bad enough all by itself, but it isn't the only problem that we face, as our future economic growth may be far less than we have enjoyed in past expansions:

The Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly warned that running federal budget deficits that result in dramatically expanding national debt by trillions of dollars in the next few years will diminish the prospects for growth in the U.S. economy.

In a letter to Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., dated May 19, 2008, Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, explained that trillions of dollars in projected federal deficits "would crowd out productive investment in capital in the United States" by absorbing funds from the nation's pool of savings and absorbing foreign capital that might otherwise be invested in the U.S. private economy.

What is even more disheartening is that the actions being taken by our own government to "fix" the problem are being seen as (and in my opinion are) part of what got us into this mess to begin with:

Merkel further warned that President Obama was repeating the problem that caused the global economic meltdown in the first place.

Specifically, her charge was that the economy collapsed because the economic stimulus after Sept. 11 depended entirely upon the credit abundantly made available when then-Fed Chairman Greenspan held interest rates at 1 percent in 2003 and 2004.

"This crisis did not come about because we used too little money but because we created economic growth with too much money, and it was not sustainable growth," Merkel told the Financial Times. "If we want to learn from that, the answer is not to repeat the mistakes of the past."

You can read the whole excerpt here.

Perhaps it might be a really good idea to start thinking about attending the next Tea Party that takes place in your area.

Just a thought.