Slashdot Mirror
British Tax System Uses Web Robots To Find Cheats
judgecorp writes "HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is extending its campaign against tax cheats with the news that it will use web robots to trawl cyberspace. The system will check eBay and Google to identify traders who aren't declaring all their earnings. From the article: 'The decision to target cyberspace to hunt down those evading tax comes as HMRC continues its campaign to recover around £7 billion lost to the Treasury each year. It is thought that this latest development, the use of ‘web robots’, will help HMRC track down rogue eBay and Gumtree businesses, as well as people earning second incomes by acting as private tutors. It will also help it hunt down so called cash-in-hand handymen and traders.'"
the USA has had a deficit for almost every year of its existence
That's not only completely false, it would be misleading even if it were completely true. There have been several dozen years during which the debt was paid down at least slightly, and many others in which the increase in GDP far outweighed the increase in the debt. On that last point, I'm not saying anyone should ever count on growing their way out of debt (as a few of the more delusional Republican potential candidates, especially Pawlenty, seem to advocate today), but it's perfectly reasonable for a fiscally stable government to borrow some money in periods of preexisting economic growth, and of course there are times when you can cause economic growth by spending borrowed money in the right places.
So in a word, no. The US government has not spent substantially more than it took in throughout most of it's history, or when it did economic growth or fiscal responsibility closed the gap in following years. The only times we've had truly massive debt spikes were major wars, and the last thirty years of total irresponsibility. And that irresponsibility caught up with us about five years ago, truth be told. Most politicians are barely edging their way around to admitting the possible existence of a problem right now, but this crap reached crisis levels a while ago.
No government can spend more than it takes in for any impressively long time, and it certainly isn't the regular order of things.