Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Although they're often talked about separately, you really have to link them together to see the impact on the economy. For example, if the government were to raise taxes and just take that money and not do anything with it, just burn it, for example, clearly that would be bad for the economy because you would be taking spending power away from consumers and not doing anything with it. On the other hand, if the government could just create out of the sky money and spend it on some program without having to take those resources from the private sector, again, that would be, in this case, beneficial. But obviously, those are two fantasy worlds. We, really, when we talk about government, we know that government ultimately gets its resources from the public, from the private sector, from people. So you really have to say, 'Alright, if you're going to raise taxes, the next question is, Well, what are you going to spend it on, and what's the economic impact when the other two combine?' And there are many things, obviously, that we need in the economy where we clearly have to have government doing it; roads would be a good example, police, fire, national defense. And so if you look at raising taxes, increasing taxes for those functions and say, 'Well, what's the benefit of spending on those items?' then the two probably create a net benefit. So my bottom line here is that you really have to consider those two ends, if you will, of the public sector together. You have to talk about what's the impact of raising taxes and also link that to where that tax money is going to be used."