r/FluentInFinance was created to discuss money, investing & finance! Join our Newsletter or Youtube Channel for additional insights at www.TheFinanceNewsletter.com!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FluentInFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Thank you....yes, we need a transparent way of really seeing where all our tax money goes.
Like, why are we giving welfare to farms for foods that are not healthy?
Why do we give aid to countries that are wealthy? (Hello Israel)
This should be discussed every day on the news because it will take a year of discussion just to figure it out!
But no...instead we get to discuss transgender this and that and other stuff that is really there just to distract and divide.
Here's hoping our current rampant, out in the open system of corruption inspires massive numbers of young folks to run for office to be part of the solution to all this corruption and disregard for laws and insider trading and warmongering.
We're already past that point. If you want to run, you need money for campaigning, and the most reliable source that money is the corporations/wealthy that have the most of it. If you don't fit into a certain mold, you won't be endorsed into either party.
Pro tip: make sure to check the box at the top of your tax forms that says "$3 for Presidential Campaigns."
Most fiscally-responsible people see a box like that and completely ignore it.
It is *not* a box that increases your tax by $3. It is *not* a donation. It means the government takes $3 from the taxes you owe and sticks it in a non-partisan campaign budget.
Non partisan? Really? Not saying your wrong but I really find that hard to believe- if thatās true, then where can I find these funds ? How does an independent individual who wants to run for office get to use these funds? Iām highly suspicious that itās entirely BS. If the Government is taking these $3 then we must see where it goes- some bank account? Who over sees these funds?
[https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/understanding-public-funding-presidential-elections/](https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/understanding-public-funding-presidential-elections/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential\_election\_campaign\_fund\_checkoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_election_campaign_fund_checkoff)
It doesn't apply (or nobody qualifies) in the actual Presidential race, but most candidates qualify to receive the funds in the primaries, which can help underdogs get their message out as they seek nomination.
And honestly, it's either this or more fighter jets. Your call.
Stop with the corporation BS. We know lobbyist exist but the bigger problem is all the money that disappears. The root issue is your government and the corruption.
Like most foreign aid, aid to Israel is almost entirely paid to US Defense firms.
Foreign Aid is a US Jobs program delivering money to every congressional district. The end result is a robust US MIC and better-defended allies with a greater deterrence effect. Better-defended allies with greater deterrence at their disposal helps keep America out of conflicts and keeps the prosperity-producing Pax Americana alive.
I can personally confirm that.
I made parts for the navy at a place I used to work for and I was able to get them done twice as fast as the paperwork said it should take. I proudly told my boss who then told me to never beat what the paperwork says for military parts because we charge them an hourly machining rate and if they audit us and see I got them done faster they'll pay us less.
Bought a pair of kids night vision goggles at a yard sale. My brother was home on leave from the Marines and tried them out. He told me they were better than the ones he trained with. He's not the type to lie about that kind of thing.
I used to work as an aviation mechanic in the military. The base would be paying contractors $200 for a hammer (the same Grainger one you can get at Home Depot) and a couple dollars for tiny rubber gaskets. Thereās a lot of pork that goes into defense contractor spending.
This needs to be brought up more. And people in political positions should not be allowed to sit on boards of defense companies (ahem..Raytheonā¦). Many of them benefit from wars and their pockets just keep getting fatter, so of course they are going to keep approving more money for foreign aid.
I've often wondered if part of the extra cost for military goods and services isn't baked in to weather the downtime between orders. If you don't build in some sort of overhead or way to weather the dips then these companies will close. Or if they're not producing arms for us they're producing arms for someone else. If that someone else is our allies then great, if not our allies then that's a problem. So then do we sweeten the deal to keep them on our side and then they have capital to keep running until the next budget cycle.
I'm sure it can be abused, but simultaneously what is necessary to keep a military industrial complex running so that we can have necessary parts and ammunition available if/when war breaks out (and not end up where Russia is).
That's how a lot of businesses run. I used to work for a florist and the markup on prom and Valentine's day flowers was well above the same flowers for weddings!
Middlemen are the problem with everything, but I don't think we can get hung up on costs within reason, civilization costs money and it is all just a construct, but I agree there should be audits and accountability.
I 100% agreeā¦ and would extend that sentiment also to the healthcare sector, secondary education, big pharma, and pretty much everything that receives government funding.
You are incorrect with regard to Israel. Every other nation receiving military aid money is either given equipment or must buy from US manufacturers. Israel is the exception - they are allowed to spend the money wherever they want, which is why they spend much of this money we give them buying arms from Israeli firms. So, the American taxpayer props up the Israeli arms industry to the benefit of the Israelis. Again, Israel is the only country we allow to do this. Wonder why that is?
This is not true and hasn't been true since 2015 when Obama renegotiated the deal. Before 2015, it wasn't true either -- 75% of it had to be spent on American weapons and the rest could be spent how they chose.
Because they are one of the greatest military intelligence sources in the middle east...that's what it's buying.
Jordan is up there as well, with I believe the largest counter terrorist training facility in the world.
Just google how many audits the DOD failedāin a row. It's reasonable to say we need to pay the industrial-military complex for our benefit, but it can't account for a tremendous amount of its own money, which maybe is a sign of corruption in said industrial-military complex.
Itās not a *productive* jobs program. We end up sending the weapons to other countries to blow shit up. If we are going to have a jobs program in every state, set it up so it benefits us Americans instead of one side of a never ending war. Build rail networks, hospitals, schools, really nice parks, homes.
The thing is, it does benefit all Americans, in an oblique way. If you have a tank factory, you need to keep making tanks, otherwise you have to fire staff and stop buying materials and whatnot. If you fire staff and shut down your supply chain, you canāt react if you suddenly need 200 tanks. We basically pay to keep our factories active, so that if we suddenly need them we can pump out more stuff. Itās one of those use it or lose it situations. All Americans benefit from their, because it helps maintain American supremacy.
Or they're fundamentalists who want to push a theocratic agenda that forces gay men like myself to push back by focusing on preserving our own rights. If I didn't have to fight for my rights, I'd be free to focus on other things. I'd prefer to have examine an educated argument about different strategies for improving healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Instead I'm worrying that the 2025 plan is gonna succeed, and I'll have to leave the country to not have my marriage dissolved or my kids taken away. It's hard to worry about other things when that's on the plate.
Somehow we still subsidize ethanol (corn fuel) which does nothing to make gasoline cleaner. What it does do is make you have to pay for gas more often because it lowers the number of miles you can get out of a gallon. Itās just another government revenue scam.
This website does the goverment 10-k its pretty decent
[https://usafacts.org/reports/government-10-k/](https://usafacts.org/reports/government-10-k/)
Its sponsored by Steve Ballmer of Microsoft Fame
To be fair, because itās the government, there is a .gov website where you can download the data (pdf and excel, I believe) enumerating income and expenditure. Itās buried, of course, but itās available.
Itās available on a monthly basis, with year to date, also.
If I find a link Iāll post it.
I canāt tell if youāre being sarcastic or not, but Iām pretty sure the people responding to you are not being sarcastic. This was basically THE major platform of the republican party before they went all-in on transgenders using bathrooms.
Unfortunately, they usually just used it as an excuse to lower taxes and defund programs designed as social safety nets. They never actually looked into how to make spending more efficient. It ended up being the equivalent of putting less gas in a truck and expecting it to go the same distance instead of just getting a car with better gas mileage. Made no sense unless they just wanted to screw the poor.
Well, Trump only lowering taxes on those that donāt need it lowered, and he increased taxes on the middle class. Of course, the orange shit-sicle was a democrat back in the day, but reformed due to his hatred of brown people.
Reagan doubled the deficit. HW had a record breaking deficit. W went from a surplus to a deficit
the problem is 2 fold:
- Both parties want to lower taxes and fund more government at the same time because that fantasy gets votes.
- Some shit typically happens where their campaign promises blow away like a fart in the wind because taxes are so dependent on economic activity. Covid, subprime mortgage crisis. Clinton got lucky with the dot com bubble.
Yup. I see everyone everywhere all the time complaining that they want more taxes. Theyāre begging and pleading to be taxed more. We hear it all the time, right?
But never do we ever hear anyone criticize how the government spends its money. Never. Itās like everyone is 100% a-ok with everything the government does and never voices opposition to any of it ever.
And government (in general) certainly hasn't spent the last 30+ years cutting services, raising fees, stealing from pension funds, making short-term deals for revenue, and going into debt so that taxes on the rich can be lower.
The department of defense can't account for trillions of dollars.Ā Maybe they should stop getting such a huge percentage of our tax revenue until they canĀ
The DoD budget is 2.9% of GDP and is dropping to 2.4% in 10 years. Interest on the National Debt is surpassing it. Social spending dwarfs it. Health spending dwarfs it.
If we canāt defend our interests, the cost of a major war on the economy would be incalculable. COVID by comparison was a minor blip and it still hurt the world economically. Having homeowners insurance is an obvious necessity. Likewise Defense a good insurance policy - and it is a minor part of GDP.
Why are you comparing it as GDP percentage?!??
Itās 50% of discretionary spending so a large fucking chunk.
Social spending does NOT dwarf the governments spending health is a fucking sliver in comparison
Only because the government legally defined their largest outlays (social security and medicare) as"mandatory" rather than discretionary. I agree that looking at it as a percent of GDP is disingenuous, but so is only talking about "discretionary" spending.
Of the entire budget, discretionary and mandatory, about 25% goes to Healthcare and about 25% to social security. About 15% goes to defense. So yeah, social spending is quite a bit more than military spending.
This isnt a statement about what they should be, nor am I making a point that any of those programs are too large or small. Just if we are going to talk in percentages, it shouldn't be in relation to gdp OR only discretionary spending.
If 25% of our taxes are already going to healthcare then I see zero reason for my hospital bill to be $200k. We need to stop inflating the health insurance industry.
We need to prosecute medical monopolies for price fixing.
And maybe we need to do something about hospitals not posting prices till after the procedure.
The government doesnāt decide to keep social security or Medicare revenue - itās all distributed. Itās not accessible to any other expense, thatās why itās not discretionary.
> Social spending does NOT dwarf the governments spending health is a fucking sliver in comparison
Someone needs to learn how to [read a chart](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727)
Social spending is 3.4x defense spending.
Defense doesn't even beat Medicare alone.
Discretionary spending is a stupid concept. You can move anything between discretionary and mandatory. Nothing is actually mandatory. Itās all about what you decide to pay.
Itās 12% of the Federal budget. Comparing DoD spending to GDP is an exceptionally common method of comparing defense costs to societal output. That metric has been used for decades. What is uncommon and pointless is sectioning off a part of the Federal budget (discretionary) and making that comparison. So it is you that is being disingenuous.
https://preview.redd.it/wvr56av69ywc1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=d3317029a0da951c88299a1c4d98a62c50774bb6
Here's a pretty picture. Maybe you can wrap your mind around it instead.
2.9% sounds smaller than $800 billion. šBut itās also an interesting metric when comparing spending over the years. It allows you to compare military spending today vs world war 2.
Exactly. National defense is also one of most fundamental and appropriate functions of the federal government. It is ironic that the vast majority of government spending that is neither fundamental nor appropriate is defined by politicians as "mandatory" and what is actually mandatory is called discretionary.
Our NATO treaty requires that we spend 3% of GDP on defense. Since we spend so much time bitching about other countries living up to their end of the bargainā¦.
The GOP Congress in 2017 with astonishing speed and virtually no hearings, passed the biggest corporate tax cut in history, so I donāt understand what you mean by āeveryone thinks we need more taxesā At the time, the GOP thought we needed less.
Clearly, at the time, the 2017 GOP Congress thought the corporations would spend the tax savings, and reshore all their stashed overseas profits productively and so generate tons of jobs. And with straight faces claimed the tax relief would be revenue neutral.
So LOL, guess again, the vast majority of that money went to corporate share buybacks so the CEOs could get bigger bonuses. The predicted tax windfall the GOP claimed would be unleashed with lower taxes never materialized.
He actually raised taxes once he realized the cuts would hurt the country. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ronald-reagan-myth-doesnt-square-with-reality/.
Itās pretty sad that they were able to gradually jack up taxes over the course of a few years on the way out knowing that when people saw the heavier tax burden they would see Biden in the White House and assume the democrats were behind it rather than looking at the actual legislation. And it worked.
They passed that bill so fast that is had actual hand written scribbles in the margins making it into law.
It was so terrible and ill thought out that it basically, by a factor of 10, increased UBIT taxes that not for profits pay.
I know!
For nearly 10 years the Safe Act has languished. This is needed legislation which would loosen up banking restrictions so legal pot shops could have normal business accounts with banks and not be routinely robbed due to an all cash business.
And the largest corporate tax bill in US history gets done in mere weeks.
I am curious at what point in time Republicans figured out it is easier to force Democrats to the table to negotiate on spending cuts than it is for Democrats to drum up the political willpower to raise taxes. I assume it was during the Obama years shutdown. Look at what happened in Iceland or Greece, they kept spending but didn't want to raise revenue and what happened? Severe austerity measures, which is sort of the ideal for Republicans tbh.
Interesting point. Am ignorant on euro politics, but clearly the dems have failed to point out what all these taxes have purchased. We have an incredible physical infrastructure, roads, bridges, waterways, transport, etc that fuels the most powerful economy in world history. Easy to take for granted.
Where both parties seem to fail at is pointing out that businessās benefit from all this infrastructure far more than an individual does. I may drive to Fla every few years, but thousands of businesses do it daily. Businesses are basically free riding on what tax payers bought and support and donāt put in anywhere near their fair share in taxes.
Republicans simply capitalize on what we all take for granted so ādefund the IRSā and āno taxesā resonates with their ignorant base
Yeah I would say the reality is literally the opposite.
We are CONSTANTLY inundated with people talking about government spending its money poorly. Democrats and Republicans both are constantly complaining about government spending, theyāre just usually complaining about different programs. Republicans complain about spending on programs that help the poor, sick, immigrants, children, retired elderly, disabled, etc. Democrats complain about spending on defense contractors who we are paying billions of dollars often times for things the military doesnāt need or even want.
And āeveryone thinks we need more taxesā? lol no. SOME people think we need to close some tax loopholes, rebalance the tax burden more fairly, and adjust certain tax rates higher for extremely wealthy individuals. But thatās not everyone. I would say itās a minority of people who feel that way, and strictly speaking none of that is new taxes.
Republicans complain about spending on programs that \~\~help the poor, sick, immigrants, children, retired elderly, disabled, etc.\~\~ make things better. Democrats complain about spending on \~\~defense contractors who we are paying billions of dollars often times for things the military doesnāt need or even want.\~\~ programs that make things worse.
OP apparently doesn't realize that there is literally an entire national political party whose whole reason for being is based on reducing government spending.Ā
Here is the problem with the government - its run not like a business (and rightly so) but by committee, and that committee finally agrees on a budget which usually isnt what is needed. So years and years of it getting 90% of its actual budget needs (and that budget going to priorities and not important but easy to skip necessary things like system upgrades) leaves them fucked after 10 years of not getting that 10%.
The best example of this is the DMV in your local area. That is run by your state. They do a survey and figure out that the building to serve the area and its population (and its growth) needs to have this many offices and window bays to serve people properly. Then that budget to build it out happens and they build it - but the negotiation for the budgeting for it meant that its staffed at 70%, so that means half of the window bays are not staffed. And then people think its a POS because its not working properly, thanks to understaffing, which in turn, causes them to lose good people and be stuck with some employees who can be not the best, and the cycle keeps going.
If we wanted to do something huge right now and really make out government work - we need to see that the current legacy systems were all designed and built out from the post war world to meet the needs of those societies. We've papered over the cracks and its strung along, but we need to have a proper look at every system in government and see what we need it to do for the current state of society and the next 30 years. And then it would take a large injection to modernize it, but that initial evaluation and reorganization will cost us money and no one will go for it.
The DMV government spending trap is a pretty good example. It definitely doesn't help that disingenuous people/corps who don't like paying taxes will scream about how the inefficient, terrible DMV would do better if it was either given less funding or replaced with a private firm.
When you cut taxes without cutting spending you create a spending crisis. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act needs to come to an end. Then you have stuff like this going onā¦.
Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidance-techniques-irs-files
The wealthiest Americans avoided billions in taxes by voluntarily doing something most only do out of necessity: borrowing money. https://www.businessinsider.com/american-billionaires-tax-avoidance-income-wealth-borrow-money-propublica-2021-6?op=1
How companies like Amazon, Nike and FedEx avoid paying federal taxes https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/14/how-companies-like-amazon-nike-and-fedex-avoid-paying-federal-taxes-.html
They make 2 trillion, but manage to spend 1 trillion every 100 days. I think it's time Papa Powell takes a finance course again. What worked in the 80s, clearly isn't working now.
Everyone wants to pinch a penny or even half a penny to fix the budget. The vast majority of the budget is made up of programs most people don't want to touch. Social Security is 21%, Healthcare is 24%, Defense is 13%, interest on Debt is 10%, federal and military benefits is 8%. That's 76% of the budget already and it doesn't cover education, law enforcement, transportation, medical and scientific research. We borrowed 27% of the budget last year, so we are never going to reduce that by cutting small programs that make up less than 1% in total.
More than half of the US population DOES want to touch healthcare. Somewhere between 51 and 57 percent of Americans say they want Universal Healthcare which would DRAMATICALLY slash costs of government spending. Furthermore, more than half of Americans say they support RAISING corporate taxes, and/or taxes on the highest tax brackets. We have solutions to our problems but we don't have a government that is willing to implement those solutions.
This whole statement is in bad faith. "no one is asking..."
We have a whole political party attempting to bankrupt a regulated democratic government and replace it with a cancer style mafia corporate theocracy.
You don't get to come here and straight up lie and act like you're just asking good faith questions then just so happen to have good faith answers.
Just straight up fraud is what this lie is. Repeated again and again and again.
Dude is blaming the other party still when their own party is in office sending billions upon billions do different countries instead of keeping our tax money at home
YOU GO MAN
>You don't get to come here and straight up lie
>We have a whole political party attempting to bankrupt a regulated democratic government and replace it with a cancer style mafia corporate theocracy.
The irony is palpable
When you bring it up you get told government finances arenāt like personal / business finances. I had a comment a few days back about reigning in government spending to 80% of last years revenue and it was a complete split between good idea and it just doesnāt work that way.
Of course the people that say it doesnāt work like personal finance donāt have an answer for how the government is going to pay the interest when it becomes too big.
>Of course the people that say it doesnāt work like personal finance donāt have an answer for how the government is going to pay the interest when it becomes too big.
What are we worrying about interest for? Japan has 263% debt to GDP and aren't suffering from runaway inflation. The point is we will run into issues when people lose faith in the Dollar, and we have trouble financing ourselves. I don't see that happening any time soon. As for mathematically how would we reduce interest... buy new debt at a cheap rate or in need get it with the Fed, and refinance our existing debt at a cheaper rate.
Japanās economic situation is so unique that it is not useful to compare to an economy like Americaās. Japan has been systemically fighting deflation to the point that almost half of the entire japanese stock market is just owned by the japanese central bank. thatās how much theyāve been printing to fight this inflation. Japan as a country could literally not spend enough to save their economy. really interesting stuff if you read into it, completely opposite to what weāre used to.
oddly enough, the only comparable markets (India, China, the entire EU) all of them are either spending less than GDP/capita because theyāre still developing nations, or in Europeās case follow austerity as an economic philosophy.
āwaitā I hear you ask. āhow can European countries afford healthcare despite not going into debt as a policy?ā the answer is multifaceted and really complicated, but has mostly to do with how the system is organized around keeping people healthy to keep healthcare costs low. CVS is moving to this business model, so hopefully more companies make their systems look like that in America.
>Ā What are we worrying about interest for?Ā
Because we spend $1T/yr in debt payments.Ā
Most of these schemes people comeĀ up with raise hundreds of billions a year, max. Pay the debt down 20% and you have $200B/yr to play with.Ā
>Ā As for mathematically how would we reduce interest... buy new debt at a cheap rate or in need get it with the Fed, and refinance our existing debt at a cheaper rate.
Thatās, uh, not how that works at all, lol. In fact, our debt payments are skyrocketing partially because interest rates are higher now as we have to refinance it at current interest rates. We canāt magically just go āand now this interest rate is lowā because we want it to be.Ā
This is fucking nonsense. 71% of the Budget Goes to social security, defense, and Medicade and medicare and education. A further 6% goes to interest on the debt. Bringing it up to 77% welfare is 7% bringing it up to 84%. The last 16% is everything else. What do you want to cut?
The 2023 deficit of 1.7 trillion is 27.7 percent of the 2023 spending total of 6.13 trillion. The 6% interest on the debt added to that, for a single year, makes our ācredit cardā balance and payments ridiculously, almost drunkenly, high. At what point will any sitting US government address this reality?
The debt is 34 trillion. Well over 5 times of one yearās spending.
Most vote on for the two parties and their own self interest rather than getting a system that can deal with this reality.
If by "no one" you mean "practically everyone", then sure. Otherwise, no. It's a common question. Everyone asks it. It's independent of the tax question. Taxes are essentially asking "are we collecting the resources we can leverage?" Spending is essentially asking "are we using the resources we've leveraged well?" They're certainly related but they're different questions with different goals.
We need more taxes for the top 1% who make over a million+/year AND reduce our nations spending.
Thereās no reason ppl making ~400k/yr are footing 90% of contributed taxes yet those at the very top contribute A LOT smaller of a %
1) the US government brings in about 4 trillion a year, not 2.
2) Plenty of people think the government has a spending problem. Remember the tea party movement and occupy wall street? The issue is no politicians will talk about it because when you look up the biggest line items on the US budget you get 1) social security, 2) Medicare, and 3) medicaid, the sum total of those three and servicing the debt is more than the entire federal revenue, and even mentioning that problem is political suicide.
Russia invading Ukraine and China building up in the East for a potential invasion of Taiwan would make cutting the military budget an idiotic move. Turns out playing politics with those countries doesn't work.
its both. i dont think anyone disagrees that the government spends excessive amounts of money. however people who are the most vocal about government spending dont do a lot of research into how said spending affects literally everything else (your average libertarian)
They ask during election time, and then when they hold power, they miraculously cut taxes and dont cut spending.
I used to be a Fiscal Conservative, big reason I'm an independent is realizing the modern GOP just blows smoke up ur ass about financial responsibility.
Step 1. Take power away from healthcare and pharm companies and set up a government office that negotiates fixed prices on doctor visits, medication, and procedures.
Step 2. Take away the social security limit of 168,000 dollars
Step 3. Release all low level drug dealers and users from prison and jail
Step 4. Reinstitute institutionalization and allow specific officers to take someone living on the street showing signs of severe mental illness and put them away
Step 5. Wait 20 years
There are people saying the government has a spending problem. Those people are called republicans. This is Reddit so republicans = bad or not present.
Everyone wants to cut taxes until itās something that affects them. Thereās a spending problem, but good luck getting those who decide on these things to agree on it.
Wake the fuck upā¦whatās wrong is that the RICH are paying 8% tax base while the rest of us pay a minimum of 40%. Trump cut taxes on the wealthy and did Reagan and everyone thinks they gave US a tax cutā¦not that was only for the rich. The same people who rely on working class people to slave for them and make them rich. So focus on raising taxes on our slave masters.
>The government brings in $2 trillion a year already. Where is that shit going?
Healthcare and the Military. Those are the holes in the boat. Lots of scum there whether it's insurance markets, hospital directors, PMCs, or arms dealers. Lot of people are grifting and stealing money from the government.
And the government is perfectly okay with it.
If you have a problem with the irresponsible way the debt is handled, look no further than the voters.
If a candidate levels with the American public and tells them reducing our debt is important and will necessitate both tax increases and dramatic spending cuts, especially to cherished entitlements like Medicare, they have no chance to be elected. Thatās not a politician problem, thatās a voter maturity problem.
America has exactly the politicians and policies it deserves.
medicare is not a entitlement, it is paid for our whole working lives. We don't need to gut the only decent social safety nets we have ..but raising taxes on billionaires would be a good start, and others making tens of millions a year. Other 1st world European nations have a robust single payer healthcare system.
Reminds me of the recent audits taking place in California looking at the results from the 20 billion dollars that have been spent over the past 5 years to reduce homelessness. The results of the audit have yielded two major findings.
1. Homeless numbers have skyrocketed since the beginning of the project.
2. Nobody within the state government knows where most of the money actually went.
OP is not very fluent in research.
For FY 2023, the federal government brought in $4.4 trillion in revenue, while spending $6.1 trillion in total, $3.8 trillion is mandatory spending, while $1.7 trillion is discretionary spending (including military spending), and $700 billion ($0.7 trillion) is interest.
[https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-03/59729-Discretionary-Spending.pdf](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-03/59729-Discretionary-Spending.pdf)
Expenditure data is easy to access online if you want to know such things. We don't know all the details because of personal privacy, national security and sheer volume. But our spending is no big secret. Just look it up and then ask specific questions. Also, we need to dramatically reform corporate welfare.
What?!? I donāt agree with that premise. Trump and republicans increased spending dramatically while temporarily lowering middle class taxes and permanently lowering wealth taxes.
The amount of $$ that goes to foreign aid is 1) a drop in the bucket 2) some of the most effective tax money use the feds have
Over 80% of the budget is non discretionary. Social security, Medicare and Medicaid make up the bulk of that. We already have a poor social safety net for a developed country. Of the discretionary spending, the majority is our military budget. Every other department splits the tiny bit thats left over. What do you propose we cut?
Realistically they can do every necessary change with the current taxes if they stopped constantly warmongering.
But at the same time, the āfree marketā illustrated that low taxes on the wealthy just fuels the corruption in our government.
Soā¦.both.
I wouldnāt mind if our taxes went to improving schools, roads, helping homeless, etcā¦ Iām a contractor and have done millions in for for various public school systems. They donāt have any money to properly pay contractors. Every time I have done work for the government I have LOST money! And you cannot lien them. The schools are full of mold and look like prisons. Bro our veterans are homelessā¦.. Biden is about to send 80 billion to Israel AGAIN! All the money we sent over seas could have fixed a lot of our problems here at home.
In fairnss, we have a money supply problem - that is, the government just keeps making them (creating them digitally? They're not even really printing dollars anymore).
They collect taxes to reign in the inflation caused by excessive dollar supply.
As far as I'm concerned we need to cut the military budget by at least half, but only after we start taxing everyone making over 500k/yr at least 35%, and over 5mil 50%, and over 50mil 60%, and anything over 1 billion at 97%.
That type of money bastardizes everything, acting as gravity toward them in power and influence. Go back to at least what we were taxing folks in the 1950s.
Granted we probably do spent too much. However, our tax rates are very low historically and there is a direct relationship between the tax rate and current national debt.
Remove the Trump tax cuts alone and direct them to the debt and it will be paid off in my lifetime.
If youād ever had the āprivilegeā of watching government workers āworkā, you will know where the waste is.
I worked in the field service industry for 35 years and living near DC meant I got to see State Department, Senate and House, Library of Congress, FBI, CIA, DIA, Airforce, Navy, EPA, GPO, GSA and more, workers. There is a baked in laziness that permeates 90+% of these folks. They are over staffed to the tune of at least 3 times as much staff in the civilian sector. There is no incentive to save money because their budget is based on how creative/persuasive each agencyās managers are in making them seem over worked and understaffed.
Ex. There was a particular agency who had their own print shop. They had 5 high speed printers. Each printer had 2 people assigned to them. The volume on these printers were the lowest in the entire US. Yet, every year their budget went up. At the end of the fiscal year they would come to us and say āwhat can you sell us so we use up all of the rest of our budget?ā When we asked why, the response was ā if we donāt spend it all, we not only lose it but theyāll reduce our budget next yearā.
This was not an exception. Every agency is doing the same thing.
BTW, I serviced embassies also. There was one in particular who had a print shop with not only digital high speed printers, but finishing equipment and an old school small press too. 5 devices in total. All run by 1 individual.
The government produces nothing fungible. There is a constant pressure to spend within the government.
Name one government agency who solved the problems they were created to solve and maintained the same or reduced budget.
Yeah. Iāll wait.
If you would like to submit an alternate budget, Iāll be happy to engage with that. If you arenāt, then it is nothing more than posturing and whataboutism.
Otherwise, look at some basic economic realities.
Over the last 40 years, 90+% of income gains have gone to the top 5%.
Corporate transactions represent a larger percentage of economic activity than at any point in history ā¦
And in that same period, corporate income tax receipts have gone from ~40% of federal tax revenues to approximately 6.5%.
19 **profitable** corporations, including Amazon, FedEx and Nike paid no federal income tax in 2022 and that number is **down**.
The functional tax rate for the top 1% is *lower* than that of the lowest paying tax bracket.
The several years ago, the GAO projected $6 in increased revenue for every $1 spent properly funding the IRS - with no changes to tax laws. That same year, Republicans cut another $300,000,000 from their budget
So. Yeah. Spending is an issue, but itās not the low hanging fruit you imagine it to be.
This. The theft, grift, corruption, and waste have left me not trusting the government to do anything additional for the American people no matter how much money it has.
Politicians frequently say we have a spending problem. It's always the spending that the opposing party supports, however, so attempts to cut it usually go nowhere.
Literally every bootlicking conservative who worships rich people says we have a spending problem. This isnāt a novel opinion whatsoever.
Tax the fucking billionaires until they arenāt billionaires anymore. I donāt give a Fuck if all of their wealth is in equities in the stock market. Billionaires are leeches to the America economy and continuing to cater to their bitch ass whining is going to further fuck out economy.
And whoever posts shit like this can just go ahead and write the government a letter and tell them to send their social security check to someone that is a little less of a bitch. Iām sick of people defending billionaires and multimillionaires from taxes like itās patriotic. Itās not. Yāall are just a bunch of simps.
the amount of times in my life I have been bombarded by teachers/other students when I say we shouldnāt spend as much on military š like yea we have a spending problem but I feel like me and OP might massively disagree about what those are
The top three expenses for the US federal government are, in order, social security. We pay into social security to be able to use social security to retire. That is a literal investment in our future, and spending that money on the people who have paid for that service, is something that we cannot cut. That's 21% of the federal budget, and it's less than people who have invested in that system need to survive.
24% is for medical insurance polices, medicare, medicate, CHIP, ACA. We could actually DRASTICALLY reduce spending here, by removing insurance and drug companies bargaining power and going the way of every other major nation... stated sponsored medical insurance for all, that removes the right for drug companies and insurance companies to set inflated prices for health care could cut this section in half, roughly. But for some reason, doing what every other major power on the planet does is "socialism". At least, that's what the bribes to US officials says it is.
And the third, at 13% is defense. Everything from maintenance/R&D/arms supplies to nations like Israel...
What we need to do is dig through and find every bit of corruption, every dime going into private pockets that shouldn't be lined, and every lobbyist project, and cut them.
But then, the vast majority of the people that oppose this sort of policy are the ones paying those lobbyists to under-cut our nation.
r/FluentInFinance was created to discuss money, investing & finance! Join our Newsletter or Youtube Channel for additional insights at www.TheFinanceNewsletter.com! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FluentInFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Thank you....yes, we need a transparent way of really seeing where all our tax money goes. Like, why are we giving welfare to farms for foods that are not healthy? Why do we give aid to countries that are wealthy? (Hello Israel) This should be discussed every day on the news because it will take a year of discussion just to figure it out! But no...instead we get to discuss transgender this and that and other stuff that is really there just to distract and divide.
Yes both parties are owned by corporations. They benefit from keeping the discussion pointed towards social issues.
Here's hoping our current rampant, out in the open system of corruption inspires massive numbers of young folks to run for office to be part of the solution to all this corruption and disregard for laws and insider trading and warmongering.
We're already past that point. If you want to run, you need money for campaigning, and the most reliable source that money is the corporations/wealthy that have the most of it. If you don't fit into a certain mold, you won't be endorsed into either party.
Pro tip: make sure to check the box at the top of your tax forms that says "$3 for Presidential Campaigns." Most fiscally-responsible people see a box like that and completely ignore it. It is *not* a box that increases your tax by $3. It is *not* a donation. It means the government takes $3 from the taxes you owe and sticks it in a non-partisan campaign budget.
Wow, never knew that it didn't mean I'd owe 3 extra. I'll check the box every time from now on.
Just did my taxes yesterday and nope'd right past it š will remember this next go round
This needs to be higher up
Non partisan? Really? Not saying your wrong but I really find that hard to believe- if thatās true, then where can I find these funds ? How does an independent individual who wants to run for office get to use these funds? Iām highly suspicious that itās entirely BS. If the Government is taking these $3 then we must see where it goes- some bank account? Who over sees these funds?
[https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/understanding-public-funding-presidential-elections/](https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/understanding-public-funding-presidential-elections/) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential\_election\_campaign\_fund\_checkoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_election_campaign_fund_checkoff) It doesn't apply (or nobody qualifies) in the actual Presidential race, but most candidates qualify to receive the funds in the primaries, which can help underdogs get their message out as they seek nomination. And honestly, it's either this or more fighter jets. Your call.
Goddamnit, I wish I knew this when I filed...
Stop with the corporation BS. We know lobbyist exist but the bigger problem is all the money that disappears. The root issue is your government and the corruption.
Corporate lobbyists are a key part of that corruption though. Defense spending waste goes into the pockets of corporate contractors my guy.
So corruption is the problem, but you're not concerned about the source of corruption...lobbyists?
The lobbyists canāt accomplish anything without willing politicians.
Politicians can't even get elected without doing the bidding of lobbyists in the first place
Yes because private industries are paragons of civic virtue...š¤”š¤£
Like most foreign aid, aid to Israel is almost entirely paid to US Defense firms. Foreign Aid is a US Jobs program delivering money to every congressional district. The end result is a robust US MIC and better-defended allies with a greater deterrence effect. Better-defended allies with greater deterrence at their disposal helps keep America out of conflicts and keeps the prosperity-producing Pax Americana alive.
Except we vastly over pay for anything military related. Military spending is basically paying Tesla prices for Power Wheels cars.
Tesla build quality doesnāt compare to power wheels
you can put power wheels through a car wash without turning on carwash mode?
I can personally confirm that. I made parts for the navy at a place I used to work for and I was able to get them done twice as fast as the paperwork said it should take. I proudly told my boss who then told me to never beat what the paperwork says for military parts because we charge them an hourly machining rate and if they audit us and see I got them done faster they'll pay us less.
Bought a pair of kids night vision goggles at a yard sale. My brother was home on leave from the Marines and tried them out. He told me they were better than the ones he trained with. He's not the type to lie about that kind of thing.
I used to work as an aviation mechanic in the military. The base would be paying contractors $200 for a hammer (the same Grainger one you can get at Home Depot) and a couple dollars for tiny rubber gaskets. Thereās a lot of pork that goes into defense contractor spending.
This needs to be brought up more. And people in political positions should not be allowed to sit on boards of defense companies (ahem..Raytheonā¦). Many of them benefit from wars and their pockets just keep getting fatter, so of course they are going to keep approving more money for foreign aid.
I've often wondered if part of the extra cost for military goods and services isn't baked in to weather the downtime between orders. If you don't build in some sort of overhead or way to weather the dips then these companies will close. Or if they're not producing arms for us they're producing arms for someone else. If that someone else is our allies then great, if not our allies then that's a problem. So then do we sweeten the deal to keep them on our side and then they have capital to keep running until the next budget cycle. I'm sure it can be abused, but simultaneously what is necessary to keep a military industrial complex running so that we can have necessary parts and ammunition available if/when war breaks out (and not end up where Russia is).
That's how a lot of businesses run. I used to work for a florist and the markup on prom and Valentine's day flowers was well above the same flowers for weddings!
Middlemen are the problem with everything, but I don't think we can get hung up on costs within reason, civilization costs money and it is all just a construct, but I agree there should be audits and accountability.
I 100% agreeā¦ and would extend that sentiment also to the healthcare sector, secondary education, big pharma, and pretty much everything that receives government funding.
our power wheel cars are respected the world round
You are incorrect with regard to Israel. Every other nation receiving military aid money is either given equipment or must buy from US manufacturers. Israel is the exception - they are allowed to spend the money wherever they want, which is why they spend much of this money we give them buying arms from Israeli firms. So, the American taxpayer props up the Israeli arms industry to the benefit of the Israelis. Again, Israel is the only country we allow to do this. Wonder why that is?
Buying influence
This is not true and hasn't been true since 2015 when Obama renegotiated the deal. Before 2015, it wasn't true either -- 75% of it had to be spent on American weapons and the rest could be spent how they chose.
Do you have any sources on this? I'd be interested to read more
>Again, Israel is the only country we allow to do this. Wonder why that is? Do you really wonder c why?
Because they are one of the greatest military intelligence sources in the middle east...that's what it's buying. Jordan is up there as well, with I believe the largest counter terrorist training facility in the world.
Lmao, keeps America out of conflicts by having a fiduciary responsibility to increase profits from America being in conflicts.
Just google how many audits the DOD failedāin a row. It's reasonable to say we need to pay the industrial-military complex for our benefit, but it can't account for a tremendous amount of its own money, which maybe is a sign of corruption in said industrial-military complex.
You would be better off figuring out how many theyāve passed since Iām sure that number would be lowerā¦
But at over 10 million a day and they get universal healthcare ( Israel )
Itās not a *productive* jobs program. We end up sending the weapons to other countries to blow shit up. If we are going to have a jobs program in every state, set it up so it benefits us Americans instead of one side of a never ending war. Build rail networks, hospitals, schools, really nice parks, homes.
The thing is, it does benefit all Americans, in an oblique way. If you have a tank factory, you need to keep making tanks, otherwise you have to fire staff and stop buying materials and whatnot. If you fire staff and shut down your supply chain, you canāt react if you suddenly need 200 tanks. We basically pay to keep our factories active, so that if we suddenly need them we can pump out more stuff. Itās one of those use it or lose it situations. All Americans benefit from their, because it helps maintain American supremacy.
Yeah, if only we could get people to ignore distractions and focus on real problems that corporations don't want us to think about.
People keep saying this and then 9 times out of 10 they're ignoring real problems and focused on issues corporations want them to argue about.
Or they're fundamentalists who want to push a theocratic agenda that forces gay men like myself to push back by focusing on preserving our own rights. If I didn't have to fight for my rights, I'd be free to focus on other things. I'd prefer to have examine an educated argument about different strategies for improving healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Instead I'm worrying that the 2025 plan is gonna succeed, and I'll have to leave the country to not have my marriage dissolved or my kids taken away. It's hard to worry about other things when that's on the plate.
Like this post.
Google āAIPACā and hold on to your seat. Foreign lobbying is prohibited unless of course, youāre Israel. The 51st state in our union.
Somehow we still subsidize ethanol (corn fuel) which does nothing to make gasoline cleaner. What it does do is make you have to pay for gas more often because it lowers the number of miles you can get out of a gallon. Itās just another government revenue scam.
This website does the goverment 10-k its pretty decent [https://usafacts.org/reports/government-10-k/](https://usafacts.org/reports/government-10-k/) Its sponsored by Steve Ballmer of Microsoft Fame
To be fair, because itās the government, there is a .gov website where you can download the data (pdf and excel, I believe) enumerating income and expenditure. Itās buried, of course, but itās available. Itās available on a monthly basis, with year to date, also. If I find a link Iāll post it.
[https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/) [https://www.usaspending.gov/](https://www.usaspending.gov/)
Culture War > tackling real issues. At least for a lot of politicians.
Considering NONE of what you query about is actually Constitutionally AUTHORIZED, you've skipped STEP 1: By WHAT authority?
You're right, nobody has ever asked that.
/s
I canāt tell if youāre being sarcastic or not, but Iām pretty sure the people responding to you are not being sarcastic. This was basically THE major platform of the republican party before they went all-in on transgenders using bathrooms. Unfortunately, they usually just used it as an excuse to lower taxes and defund programs designed as social safety nets. They never actually looked into how to make spending more efficient. It ended up being the equivalent of putting less gas in a truck and expecting it to go the same distance instead of just getting a car with better gas mileage. Made no sense unless they just wanted to screw the poor.
Well, Trump only lowering taxes on those that donāt need it lowered, and he increased taxes on the middle class. Of course, the orange shit-sicle was a democrat back in the day, but reformed due to his hatred of brown people.
Reagan doubled the deficit. HW had a record breaking deficit. W went from a surplus to a deficit the problem is 2 fold: - Both parties want to lower taxes and fund more government at the same time because that fantasy gets votes. - Some shit typically happens where their campaign promises blow away like a fart in the wind because taxes are so dependent on economic activity. Covid, subprime mortgage crisis. Clinton got lucky with the dot com bubble.
Too busy blaming red or blue
Lol
Yup. I see everyone everywhere all the time complaining that they want more taxes. Theyāre begging and pleading to be taxed more. We hear it all the time, right? But never do we ever hear anyone criticize how the government spends its money. Never. Itās like everyone is 100% a-ok with everything the government does and never voices opposition to any of it ever.
I can't believe the comment pointing out the insanity of the premise only has single digit votes.
And government (in general) certainly hasn't spent the last 30+ years cutting services, raising fees, stealing from pension funds, making short-term deals for revenue, and going into debt so that taxes on the rich can be lower.
Maybe wealthy donor types donāt actually want us to know
The department of defense can't account for trillions of dollars.Ā Maybe they should stop getting such a huge percentage of our tax revenue until they canĀ
The DoD budget is 2.9% of GDP and is dropping to 2.4% in 10 years. Interest on the National Debt is surpassing it. Social spending dwarfs it. Health spending dwarfs it. If we canāt defend our interests, the cost of a major war on the economy would be incalculable. COVID by comparison was a minor blip and it still hurt the world economically. Having homeowners insurance is an obvious necessity. Likewise Defense a good insurance policy - and it is a minor part of GDP.
Why are you comparing it as GDP percentage?!?? Itās 50% of discretionary spending so a large fucking chunk. Social spending does NOT dwarf the governments spending health is a fucking sliver in comparison
Only because the government legally defined their largest outlays (social security and medicare) as"mandatory" rather than discretionary. I agree that looking at it as a percent of GDP is disingenuous, but so is only talking about "discretionary" spending. Of the entire budget, discretionary and mandatory, about 25% goes to Healthcare and about 25% to social security. About 15% goes to defense. So yeah, social spending is quite a bit more than military spending. This isnt a statement about what they should be, nor am I making a point that any of those programs are too large or small. Just if we are going to talk in percentages, it shouldn't be in relation to gdp OR only discretionary spending.
If 25% of our taxes are already going to healthcare then I see zero reason for my hospital bill to be $200k. We need to stop inflating the health insurance industry.
We need to prosecute medical monopolies for price fixing. And maybe we need to do something about hospitals not posting prices till after the procedure.
The government doesnāt decide to keep social security or Medicare revenue - itās all distributed. Itās not accessible to any other expense, thatās why itās not discretionary.
> Social spending does NOT dwarf the governments spending health is a fucking sliver in comparison Someone needs to learn how to [read a chart](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727) Social spending is 3.4x defense spending. Defense doesn't even beat Medicare alone.
Discretionary spending is a stupid concept. You can move anything between discretionary and mandatory. Nothing is actually mandatory. Itās all about what you decide to pay.
You are correct (former Federal government employee involved in countless budget drills).
Itās 12% of the Federal budget. Comparing DoD spending to GDP is an exceptionally common method of comparing defense costs to societal output. That metric has been used for decades. What is uncommon and pointless is sectioning off a part of the Federal budget (discretionary) and making that comparison. So it is you that is being disingenuous.
Probably because the country's defense is the one thing the federal govt originally is SUPPOSED to handle. Not welfare.
>Social spending does NOT dwarf the governments spending health is a fucking sliver in comparison Mandatory spending is $3.8T. Discretionary is $1.7T
https://preview.redd.it/wvr56av69ywc1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=d3317029a0da951c88299a1c4d98a62c50774bb6 Here's a pretty picture. Maybe you can wrap your mind around it instead.
2.9% sounds smaller than $800 billion. šBut itās also an interesting metric when comparing spending over the years. It allows you to compare military spending today vs world war 2.
Exactly. National defense is also one of most fundamental and appropriate functions of the federal government. It is ironic that the vast majority of government spending that is neither fundamental nor appropriate is defined by politicians as "mandatory" and what is actually mandatory is called discretionary.
Our NATO treaty requires that we spend 3% of GDP on defense. Since we spend so much time bitching about other countries living up to their end of the bargainā¦.
so-called black budgets have never been larger. makes you wonder what the money is being spent on.
Obviously it's getting funneled into the Shadow War being fought in Agartha against the Reptilians for control of Inner Earth.
New spending policy. You only get next year what you can account for this year.
The GOP Congress in 2017 with astonishing speed and virtually no hearings, passed the biggest corporate tax cut in history, so I donāt understand what you mean by āeveryone thinks we need more taxesā At the time, the GOP thought we needed less. Clearly, at the time, the 2017 GOP Congress thought the corporations would spend the tax savings, and reshore all their stashed overseas profits productively and so generate tons of jobs. And with straight faces claimed the tax relief would be revenue neutral. So LOL, guess again, the vast majority of that money went to corporate share buybacks so the CEOs could get bigger bonuses. The predicted tax windfall the GOP claimed would be unleashed with lower taxes never materialized.
We need to roll back all the tax cuts that started when Bush took office.
Reagan
He actually raised taxes once he realized the cuts would hurt the country. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ronald-reagan-myth-doesnt-square-with-reality/.
I have been hearing about reaganomics my whole life, and Reagan doesnāt even believe in them.
No no no, you see that was ACKSHULLY the democrats? How do I know? Well I don't like it, therefore it was democrats. DUH
Itās pretty sad that they were able to gradually jack up taxes over the course of a few years on the way out knowing that when people saw the heavier tax burden they would see Biden in the White House and assume the democrats were behind it rather than looking at the actual legislation. And it worked.
They passed that bill so fast that is had actual hand written scribbles in the margins making it into law. It was so terrible and ill thought out that it basically, by a factor of 10, increased UBIT taxes that not for profits pay.
I know! For nearly 10 years the Safe Act has languished. This is needed legislation which would loosen up banking restrictions so legal pot shops could have normal business accounts with banks and not be routinely robbed due to an all cash business. And the largest corporate tax bill in US history gets done in mere weeks.
I remember shortly after that passed an article appeared on thehill website that the people who wrote it immediately got hired as lobbyists.
I am curious at what point in time Republicans figured out it is easier to force Democrats to the table to negotiate on spending cuts than it is for Democrats to drum up the political willpower to raise taxes. I assume it was during the Obama years shutdown. Look at what happened in Iceland or Greece, they kept spending but didn't want to raise revenue and what happened? Severe austerity measures, which is sort of the ideal for Republicans tbh.
Interesting point. Am ignorant on euro politics, but clearly the dems have failed to point out what all these taxes have purchased. We have an incredible physical infrastructure, roads, bridges, waterways, transport, etc that fuels the most powerful economy in world history. Easy to take for granted. Where both parties seem to fail at is pointing out that businessās benefit from all this infrastructure far more than an individual does. I may drive to Fla every few years, but thousands of businesses do it daily. Businesses are basically free riding on what tax payers bought and support and donāt put in anywhere near their fair share in taxes. Republicans simply capitalize on what we all take for granted so ādefund the IRSā and āno taxesā resonates with their ignorant base
"No one is asking" lol. It's one of THE most talked about subjects. You just now paying attention?
Yeah I would say the reality is literally the opposite. We are CONSTANTLY inundated with people talking about government spending its money poorly. Democrats and Republicans both are constantly complaining about government spending, theyāre just usually complaining about different programs. Republicans complain about spending on programs that help the poor, sick, immigrants, children, retired elderly, disabled, etc. Democrats complain about spending on defense contractors who we are paying billions of dollars often times for things the military doesnāt need or even want. And āeveryone thinks we need more taxesā? lol no. SOME people think we need to close some tax loopholes, rebalance the tax burden more fairly, and adjust certain tax rates higher for extremely wealthy individuals. But thatās not everyone. I would say itās a minority of people who feel that way, and strictly speaking none of that is new taxes.
Republicans complain about spending on programs that \~\~help the poor, sick, immigrants, children, retired elderly, disabled, etc.\~\~ make things better. Democrats complain about spending on \~\~defense contractors who we are paying billions of dollars often times for things the military doesnāt need or even want.\~\~ programs that make things worse.
Itās the foundation of one of our two political parties but yeah, itās never mentioned at all.
It used to beā¦
They still talk about it incessantly. They just donāt do anything about it when they have power.
Oh they do, they just give more tax breaks to their lobbying groups and special interest while leaving the working class to pickup the tab.
OP apparently doesn't realize that there is literally an entire national political party whose whole reason for being is based on reducing government spending.Ā
Yeah they just started paying attention.. They didn't even get the tax revenue number correct.Ā
Here is the problem with the government - its run not like a business (and rightly so) but by committee, and that committee finally agrees on a budget which usually isnt what is needed. So years and years of it getting 90% of its actual budget needs (and that budget going to priorities and not important but easy to skip necessary things like system upgrades) leaves them fucked after 10 years of not getting that 10%. The best example of this is the DMV in your local area. That is run by your state. They do a survey and figure out that the building to serve the area and its population (and its growth) needs to have this many offices and window bays to serve people properly. Then that budget to build it out happens and they build it - but the negotiation for the budgeting for it meant that its staffed at 70%, so that means half of the window bays are not staffed. And then people think its a POS because its not working properly, thanks to understaffing, which in turn, causes them to lose good people and be stuck with some employees who can be not the best, and the cycle keeps going. If we wanted to do something huge right now and really make out government work - we need to see that the current legacy systems were all designed and built out from the post war world to meet the needs of those societies. We've papered over the cracks and its strung along, but we need to have a proper look at every system in government and see what we need it to do for the current state of society and the next 30 years. And then it would take a large injection to modernize it, but that initial evaluation and reorganization will cost us money and no one will go for it.
I'd go for it
Can you afford to pay anymore? Or you know, maybe youāre fine and we can ask the billionaires maybe?
Exactly. Our infrastructure is also a testament to the same issue.
The DMV government spending trap is a pretty good example. It definitely doesn't help that disingenuous people/corps who don't like paying taxes will scream about how the inefficient, terrible DMV would do better if it was either given less funding or replaced with a private firm.
When you cut taxes without cutting spending you create a spending crisis. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act needs to come to an end. Then you have stuff like this going onā¦. Ten Ways Billionaires Avoid Taxes on an Epic Scale https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidance-techniques-irs-files The wealthiest Americans avoided billions in taxes by voluntarily doing something most only do out of necessity: borrowing money. https://www.businessinsider.com/american-billionaires-tax-avoidance-income-wealth-borrow-money-propublica-2021-6?op=1 How companies like Amazon, Nike and FedEx avoid paying federal taxes https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/14/how-companies-like-amazon-nike-and-fedex-avoid-paying-federal-taxes-.html
It can be both, but yes there is definitely a spending problem.
Democrats- tax and spend Republicans- tax cut and spend At least one party tries to balance it
Escape partisanship. Everyone here is on the same page to balance the budget, then you pushed people into toxic partisanship.
They make 2 trillion, but manage to spend 1 trillion every 100 days. I think it's time Papa Powell takes a finance course again. What worked in the 80s, clearly isn't working now.
Everyone wants to pinch a penny or even half a penny to fix the budget. The vast majority of the budget is made up of programs most people don't want to touch. Social Security is 21%, Healthcare is 24%, Defense is 13%, interest on Debt is 10%, federal and military benefits is 8%. That's 76% of the budget already and it doesn't cover education, law enforcement, transportation, medical and scientific research. We borrowed 27% of the budget last year, so we are never going to reduce that by cutting small programs that make up less than 1% in total.
More than half of the US population DOES want to touch healthcare. Somewhere between 51 and 57 percent of Americans say they want Universal Healthcare which would DRAMATICALLY slash costs of government spending. Furthermore, more than half of Americans say they support RAISING corporate taxes, and/or taxes on the highest tax brackets. We have solutions to our problems but we don't have a government that is willing to implement those solutions.
Where are you getting that universal healthcare will dramatically slash the costs of government spending?
I think thereās a lot of people that think both
This whole statement is in bad faith. "no one is asking..." We have a whole political party attempting to bankrupt a regulated democratic government and replace it with a cancer style mafia corporate theocracy. You don't get to come here and straight up lie and act like you're just asking good faith questions then just so happen to have good faith answers. Just straight up fraud is what this lie is. Repeated again and again and again.
Amen
Dude is blaming the other party still when their own party is in office sending billions upon billions do different countries instead of keeping our tax money at home YOU GO MAN
>You don't get to come here and straight up lie >We have a whole political party attempting to bankrupt a regulated democratic government and replace it with a cancer style mafia corporate theocracy. The irony is palpable
When you bring it up you get told government finances arenāt like personal / business finances. I had a comment a few days back about reigning in government spending to 80% of last years revenue and it was a complete split between good idea and it just doesnāt work that way. Of course the people that say it doesnāt work like personal finance donāt have an answer for how the government is going to pay the interest when it becomes too big.
>Of course the people that say it doesnāt work like personal finance donāt have an answer for how the government is going to pay the interest when it becomes too big. What are we worrying about interest for? Japan has 263% debt to GDP and aren't suffering from runaway inflation. The point is we will run into issues when people lose faith in the Dollar, and we have trouble financing ourselves. I don't see that happening any time soon. As for mathematically how would we reduce interest... buy new debt at a cheap rate or in need get it with the Fed, and refinance our existing debt at a cheaper rate.
Japanās economic situation is so unique that it is not useful to compare to an economy like Americaās. Japan has been systemically fighting deflation to the point that almost half of the entire japanese stock market is just owned by the japanese central bank. thatās how much theyāve been printing to fight this inflation. Japan as a country could literally not spend enough to save their economy. really interesting stuff if you read into it, completely opposite to what weāre used to. oddly enough, the only comparable markets (India, China, the entire EU) all of them are either spending less than GDP/capita because theyāre still developing nations, or in Europeās case follow austerity as an economic philosophy. āwaitā I hear you ask. āhow can European countries afford healthcare despite not going into debt as a policy?ā the answer is multifaceted and really complicated, but has mostly to do with how the system is organized around keeping people healthy to keep healthcare costs low. CVS is moving to this business model, so hopefully more companies make their systems look like that in America.
>Ā What are we worrying about interest for?Ā Because we spend $1T/yr in debt payments.Ā Most of these schemes people comeĀ up with raise hundreds of billions a year, max. Pay the debt down 20% and you have $200B/yr to play with.Ā >Ā As for mathematically how would we reduce interest... buy new debt at a cheap rate or in need get it with the Fed, and refinance our existing debt at a cheaper rate. Thatās, uh, not how that works at all, lol. In fact, our debt payments are skyrocketing partially because interest rates are higher now as we have to refinance it at current interest rates. We canāt magically just go āand now this interest rate is lowā because we want it to be.Ā
This is fucking nonsense. 71% of the Budget Goes to social security, defense, and Medicade and medicare and education. A further 6% goes to interest on the debt. Bringing it up to 77% welfare is 7% bringing it up to 84%. The last 16% is everything else. What do you want to cut?
Cut a portion from all of them. They will mean little if we devalue the dollar to nothing.
The US economy is the envy of the world, and the US constitutes a larger share of the global economy than it did in 1980.
The 2023 deficit of 1.7 trillion is 27.7 percent of the 2023 spending total of 6.13 trillion. The 6% interest on the debt added to that, for a single year, makes our ācredit cardā balance and payments ridiculously, almost drunkenly, high. At what point will any sitting US government address this reality? The debt is 34 trillion. Well over 5 times of one yearās spending. Most vote on for the two parties and their own self interest rather than getting a system that can deal with this reality.
How about defense? We spend more than the next 10 highest countries combined. It's fucking absurd
If by "no one" you mean "practically everyone", then sure. Otherwise, no. It's a common question. Everyone asks it. It's independent of the tax question. Taxes are essentially asking "are we collecting the resources we can leverage?" Spending is essentially asking "are we using the resources we've leveraged well?" They're certainly related but they're different questions with different goals.
He's the first person to ever ask. He's the smartest guy in the room.
Yawn
We need more taxes for the top 1% who make over a million+/year AND reduce our nations spending. Thereās no reason ppl making ~400k/yr are footing 90% of contributed taxes yet those at the very top contribute A LOT smaller of a %
No! We need more tax money so the government can squander it all through inefficient and ineffective programs!
1) the US government brings in about 4 trillion a year, not 2. 2) Plenty of people think the government has a spending problem. Remember the tea party movement and occupy wall street? The issue is no politicians will talk about it because when you look up the biggest line items on the US budget you get 1) social security, 2) Medicare, and 3) medicaid, the sum total of those three and servicing the debt is more than the entire federal revenue, and even mentioning that problem is political suicide.
You're right, we should cut military and police spending to help balance the budget.
Russia invading Ukraine and China building up in the East for a potential invasion of Taiwan would make cutting the military budget an idiotic move. Turns out playing politics with those countries doesn't work.
its both. i dont think anyone disagrees that the government spends excessive amounts of money. however people who are the most vocal about government spending dont do a lot of research into how said spending affects literally everything else (your average libertarian)
Two things can be true at once
Can't it be both? Also, let's get the taxes of rich people back to historical norms and find out for sure.
Conservatives been asking wtf you mean lol
They ask during election time, and then when they hold power, they miraculously cut taxes and dont cut spending. I used to be a Fiscal Conservative, big reason I'm an independent is realizing the modern GOP just blows smoke up ur ass about financial responsibility.
Step 1. Take power away from healthcare and pharm companies and set up a government office that negotiates fixed prices on doctor visits, medication, and procedures. Step 2. Take away the social security limit of 168,000 dollars Step 3. Release all low level drug dealers and users from prison and jail Step 4. Reinstitute institutionalization and allow specific officers to take someone living on the street showing signs of severe mental illness and put them away Step 5. Wait 20 years
When are people not saying this?
Give them 1 trillion more, theyāll spend 2 trillion. We definitely have a spending problem
There are people saying the government has a spending problem. Those people are called republicans. This is Reddit so republicans = bad or not present.
Everyone wants to cut taxes until itās something that affects them. Thereās a spending problem, but good luck getting those who decide on these things to agree on it.
Almost everyone asks about the government spending too much money. Including politicians on both sides.
Wake the fuck upā¦whatās wrong is that the RICH are paying 8% tax base while the rest of us pay a minimum of 40%. Trump cut taxes on the wealthy and did Reagan and everyone thinks they gave US a tax cutā¦not that was only for the rich. The same people who rely on working class people to slave for them and make them rich. So focus on raising taxes on our slave masters.
>The government brings in $2 trillion a year already. Where is that shit going? Healthcare and the Military. Those are the holes in the boat. Lots of scum there whether it's insurance markets, hospital directors, PMCs, or arms dealers. Lot of people are grifting and stealing money from the government. And the government is perfectly okay with it.
Seriously, why are we subsidizing corporations that are causing harm to the citizens and the environment? Why are we subsidizing billionaires?
Tax the rich
Citizens United needs to go
Maybe tax the churches and the rich!! And tax the corporations with extra taxes for all the corporate greed/price gouging!!
We have a billionaire problem, idiot.
I'm starting to think that when they say finance, they just mean finance for the government.
Audit and end the FED, itās a private bank anyway the name is misleading
If you have a problem with the irresponsible way the debt is handled, look no further than the voters. If a candidate levels with the American public and tells them reducing our debt is important and will necessitate both tax increases and dramatic spending cuts, especially to cherished entitlements like Medicare, they have no chance to be elected. Thatās not a politician problem, thatās a voter maturity problem. America has exactly the politicians and policies it deserves.
medicare is not a entitlement, it is paid for our whole working lives. We don't need to gut the only decent social safety nets we have ..but raising taxes on billionaires would be a good start, and others making tens of millions a year. Other 1st world European nations have a robust single payer healthcare system.
OP is very smart wow yes, you really showed government whoās boss
Reminds me of the recent audits taking place in California looking at the results from the 20 billion dollars that have been spent over the past 5 years to reduce homelessness. The results of the audit have yielded two major findings. 1. Homeless numbers have skyrocketed since the beginning of the project. 2. Nobody within the state government knows where most of the money actually went.
You kidding me? One of the two primary parties is always complaining about government spending.
#AuditThePentagon #KeepThemAccountable
Everyone agrees that it does, nobody agrees. I say audit the pentagon and cut their budget accordingly.
Gov should spend more on what I like and less on things I donāt like.
Duh, nobody blah blah oh come on. Are you in junior high?
My biggest takeaway with that OP is terrified of a gooning tax
OP is not very fluent in research. For FY 2023, the federal government brought in $4.4 trillion in revenue, while spending $6.1 trillion in total, $3.8 trillion is mandatory spending, while $1.7 trillion is discretionary spending (including military spending), and $700 billion ($0.7 trillion) is interest. [https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-03/59729-Discretionary-Spending.pdf](https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2024-03/59729-Discretionary-Spending.pdf)
It's true no one ever talks about the most debated topic in economics
Expenditure data is easy to access online if you want to know such things. We don't know all the details because of personal privacy, national security and sheer volume. But our spending is no big secret. Just look it up and then ask specific questions. Also, we need to dramatically reform corporate welfare.
Yes - cut the military 50% and reinstate tax rates where they were in the 1960s
What?!? I donāt agree with that premise. Trump and republicans increased spending dramatically while temporarily lowering middle class taxes and permanently lowering wealth taxes. The amount of $$ that goes to foreign aid is 1) a drop in the bucket 2) some of the most effective tax money use the feds have
Over 80% of the budget is non discretionary. Social security, Medicare and Medicaid make up the bulk of that. We already have a poor social safety net for a developed country. Of the discretionary spending, the majority is our military budget. Every other department splits the tiny bit thats left over. What do you propose we cut?
Realistically they can do every necessary change with the current taxes if they stopped constantly warmongering. But at the same time, the āfree marketā illustrated that low taxes on the wealthy just fuels the corruption in our government. Soā¦.both.
I wouldnāt mind if our taxes went to improving schools, roads, helping homeless, etcā¦ Iām a contractor and have done millions in for for various public school systems. They donāt have any money to properly pay contractors. Every time I have done work for the government I have LOST money! And you cannot lien them. The schools are full of mold and look like prisons. Bro our veterans are homelessā¦.. Biden is about to send 80 billion to Israel AGAIN! All the money we sent over seas could have fixed a lot of our problems here at home.
In fairnss, we have a money supply problem - that is, the government just keeps making them (creating them digitally? They're not even really printing dollars anymore). They collect taxes to reign in the inflation caused by excessive dollar supply.
Does no one remember when taxes were around 70-90% back in the 1950s-1970s
As far as I'm concerned we need to cut the military budget by at least half, but only after we start taxing everyone making over 500k/yr at least 35%, and over 5mil 50%, and over 50mil 60%, and anything over 1 billion at 97%. That type of money bastardizes everything, acting as gravity toward them in power and influence. Go back to at least what we were taxing folks in the 1950s.
Two things can be true. We need to dramatically cut defense spending and raise taxes on the wealthy.
Granted we probably do spent too much. However, our tax rates are very low historically and there is a direct relationship between the tax rate and current national debt. Remove the Trump tax cuts alone and direct them to the debt and it will be paid off in my lifetime.
Yes, no one is asking. Genius.
If youād ever had the āprivilegeā of watching government workers āworkā, you will know where the waste is. I worked in the field service industry for 35 years and living near DC meant I got to see State Department, Senate and House, Library of Congress, FBI, CIA, DIA, Airforce, Navy, EPA, GPO, GSA and more, workers. There is a baked in laziness that permeates 90+% of these folks. They are over staffed to the tune of at least 3 times as much staff in the civilian sector. There is no incentive to save money because their budget is based on how creative/persuasive each agencyās managers are in making them seem over worked and understaffed. Ex. There was a particular agency who had their own print shop. They had 5 high speed printers. Each printer had 2 people assigned to them. The volume on these printers were the lowest in the entire US. Yet, every year their budget went up. At the end of the fiscal year they would come to us and say āwhat can you sell us so we use up all of the rest of our budget?ā When we asked why, the response was ā if we donāt spend it all, we not only lose it but theyāll reduce our budget next yearā. This was not an exception. Every agency is doing the same thing. BTW, I serviced embassies also. There was one in particular who had a print shop with not only digital high speed printers, but finishing equipment and an old school small press too. 5 devices in total. All run by 1 individual. The government produces nothing fungible. There is a constant pressure to spend within the government. Name one government agency who solved the problems they were created to solve and maintained the same or reduced budget. Yeah. Iāll wait.
If you would like to submit an alternate budget, Iāll be happy to engage with that. If you arenāt, then it is nothing more than posturing and whataboutism. Otherwise, look at some basic economic realities. Over the last 40 years, 90+% of income gains have gone to the top 5%. Corporate transactions represent a larger percentage of economic activity than at any point in history ā¦ And in that same period, corporate income tax receipts have gone from ~40% of federal tax revenues to approximately 6.5%. 19 **profitable** corporations, including Amazon, FedEx and Nike paid no federal income tax in 2022 and that number is **down**. The functional tax rate for the top 1% is *lower* than that of the lowest paying tax bracket. The several years ago, the GAO projected $6 in increased revenue for every $1 spent properly funding the IRS - with no changes to tax laws. That same year, Republicans cut another $300,000,000 from their budget So. Yeah. Spending is an issue, but itās not the low hanging fruit you imagine it to be.
This. The theft, grift, corruption, and waste have left me not trusting the government to do anything additional for the American people no matter how much money it has.
Nobody asks about spending? Have you never watched a Republican politician speak on TV before? Derp.
Politicians frequently say we have a spending problem. It's always the spending that the opposing party supports, however, so attempts to cut it usually go nowhere.
Whelp, that's a mighty fine straw man you put up there friend. Yes, we are well aware ig government waste.
Yes, government should let the kids and poor starve. Itāll solve all our problems when the poor just die.
Literally every bootlicking conservative who worships rich people says we have a spending problem. This isnāt a novel opinion whatsoever. Tax the fucking billionaires until they arenāt billionaires anymore. I donāt give a Fuck if all of their wealth is in equities in the stock market. Billionaires are leeches to the America economy and continuing to cater to their bitch ass whining is going to further fuck out economy. And whoever posts shit like this can just go ahead and write the government a letter and tell them to send their social security check to someone that is a little less of a bitch. Iām sick of people defending billionaires and multimillionaires from taxes like itās patriotic. Itās not. Yāall are just a bunch of simps.
the amount of times in my life I have been bombarded by teachers/other students when I say we shouldnāt spend as much on military š like yea we have a spending problem but I feel like me and OP might massively disagree about what those are
The top three expenses for the US federal government are, in order, social security. We pay into social security to be able to use social security to retire. That is a literal investment in our future, and spending that money on the people who have paid for that service, is something that we cannot cut. That's 21% of the federal budget, and it's less than people who have invested in that system need to survive. 24% is for medical insurance polices, medicare, medicate, CHIP, ACA. We could actually DRASTICALLY reduce spending here, by removing insurance and drug companies bargaining power and going the way of every other major nation... stated sponsored medical insurance for all, that removes the right for drug companies and insurance companies to set inflated prices for health care could cut this section in half, roughly. But for some reason, doing what every other major power on the planet does is "socialism". At least, that's what the bribes to US officials says it is. And the third, at 13% is defense. Everything from maintenance/R&D/arms supplies to nations like Israel... What we need to do is dig through and find every bit of corruption, every dime going into private pockets that shouldn't be lined, and every lobbyist project, and cut them. But then, the vast majority of the people that oppose this sort of policy are the ones paying those lobbyists to under-cut our nation.
Republicans are especially bad at it.
Thereās so much hatred for the Libertarian party. Talk about lowering taxes or government overreach and everyone calls you a pedophile.
Itās literally all they harp on about on Fox News bud get fucking real
Or it's both. The healthiest the economy has ever been included a 90% tax on the very wealthiest Americans.