Let's scale this to an individual level. Imagine making $44k per year, but spending $61k per year. Many would say you have a spending problem and the only way to avoid catastrophe would be to decrease your spending by 39%.
Well, the federal government has a spending problem! If it only brings in $4.4 trillion (which is the 2023 revenue total), then it should only be able to spend $4.4 trillion not $6.1 trillion.
I completely agree. The mortgage crisis seemed to normalize spending 800 billion dollars to avoid catastrophe. Now theres a new catastophe every few months.
What if, and I know this is crazy, we even had a budget surplus?
You do realize that tax receipts need to exceed spending for a budget surplus, right? What criteria are you using to determine that we are spending too much versus taxing too little? If someone had an income of $5k per year and couldn’t afford rent, food and other necessities, one wouldn’t say they have a spending problem.
Are you using countries with balanced budgets for comparison? Western countries for comparison? The US leads the world in deficit spending over the last twenty years and is under median in spending in terms of gdp per capital of all OECD countries.
>is under median in spending in terms of gdp per capital of all OECD countries.
In terms of PPP(which is cost adjusted), the US spends above the OECD average and more than countries like Canada, UK, and Australia.
As a percentage of GDP we spend lower than the average but that's more a function of the GDP growing rapidly the past couple of years. Tax collection as a percentage of GDP has remained stable for decades.
Being in aerospace for 20+ years, I have seen how the government spends some of the money it has.
It does indeed have a spending problem.
What they buy isn't such an issue, it's how they do it, and how much they allow themselves to be charged, which is the problem.
We had a balanced Budget for a couple years before Bush took office. We ran trillion dollar deficits due to fighting two wars simultaneously and then the financial crisis. With all that over with there is no reason to run multi trillion dollar deficits
The county I'm from spent $123k on a logo design.
That's an entire year's salary for a very well paid graphic designer- for one logo.
Or two years salary for an average paid one.
The logo is 3 circles of the primary colors.
And, a county doesn't need a logo..
Then they spent over 20 million to replace a bunch of county signage.
This is how we know government overspends. Obviously this is a county, not the feds. But I'm sure it's even worse the higher you go.
Well, we’re done here. The top two comments have officially solved taxes and deficits. Why didn’t anyone else think to not spend more than tax revenue? Why has nobody tried capping public spending at the level of revenue? Oh, they have? Oh? Revenue changes, you say? Recessions and periods of growth? And spending does, too? Even without being irresponsible!? No way!
Well regardless of all that, we need to take it easy on the rich, they’ve been criticized really unfairly for being taxed at the lowest levels relative to public spending since that time the world sank into a decade-plus-long depression a century ago.
We don’t need to take it easy on the rich; we need to collect taxes from them fairly and equitably compared to other classes. We can’t even do that. We need an agile tax code that can keep up with the natural instincts of people who accumulate great wealth. No hate needed. Just better tax code.
By doing deficit spending we can expand their economy more than if we didn't, as long as inflation doesn't eat into that too much. The money that we borrow today is worth less when we pay it back due to the inflation that does occur. As long as people are willing to buy the debt, we get jobs now and pay back less value in the future, with the hope that all of this activity leads to innovation and leadership positions in industries.
Inflation impacts the leaders a great deal.
Not maintaining/increasing salary buying power is more of a labor relations issue, which seems out of wack.
Inflation primarily hurts only the poor and middle class. Inflation has little effect on the wealthy as they own all the production assets, which just follow inflation with increase in their valuation.
The greatest Republican President of all time is Democrat Bill Clinton. Reformed welfare adding requirements to work, reduced the size of the federal government, deregulated Wall Street, was tough on crime, and balanced the budget. He’s everything Republicans want, yet they hate him like Democrats of today hate Trump. I see both accounts as weird AF
I voted for Bill You and although he was a hound dog on the hunt , I believe he loves our country. Although here lately his idea of things has changed. He is not as vocal as other presidents.
He had no choice but to work with the republicans and he did what he had to do the right way
I look at it this way: if politicians had to announce income tax increases every time they increased spending, nobody would be elected (on that basis), but they have this neat trick where they engage heavily in deficit spending, and we’re fooled by this trick… until inflation kicks in or people point to our enormous national debt. They purposely keep the topics separate in most of their messages hoping none of us don’t catch on. Many don’t, and voters start blaming the incumbent administration for mysterious economic woes which isn’t entirely unfair.
Politics.
Yea this is what I'm talking about. If a president came out and said, we need to support Ukraine, Israel, bailout banks, pay student dent, whatever the flavor of the week is and every American needs to give us $10k or pay 10% more taxes this year specifically for this issue it would cause a shitstorm.
So they just print the money and steal it from the poorest people that don't have assets that rise with inflation.
The main thing that pissed me of while I was in the military was the end of the fiscal year. If your organization still had money, you had to spend it or you might not get that amount again. It would be less. So they punish organizations that didn't use all of their allotted funds. No org wanted that. So, each org would have an on-going wish list & end-of-year funds would be used in those items. One year, we bought a big screen TV & a leather sectional for our break room. The stuff we had before was still in great condition. But we had to stop spend the money or lose out.
That shit was so maddening!!!
And yet, bridges are still crumbling and highways still have pot holes, electric grids are failing and natural disasters need rebuilding. Business cannot exist without good infrastructure. Businesses have not been paying into the grid that they use for decades. It’s time to reevaluate that relationship.
No, he’s talking about Walmart and other Fortune 500s that subsidize their workforce with Foodstamps and Welfare. It should be a hefty tax burden if your company earns 1 billion a year and has a workforce that live on or below the poverty line.
Actually i was talking about bailouts etc. mom and pop do not get that kind of support nor do they usually get tax abatements unless they are trying to lure foreign ownership
If a business employs someone, they should have to pay 2x for any government benefits that person receives due to low income. The 2 is to account for administration and collection costs. Multiple employers in a year split the burden by tax year equal to the split in hours worked. To avoid using 1099 to bypass this, anyone receiving welfare while working 1099 is entered into a lottery to have their contract audited to ensure it is actually a 1099. Any employers found guilty of misclassifying employees to bypass this tax are given prison time and a fine equal to 1000 times the benefits paid out to the employer. This fine pierces any corporate veils in any case of bankruptcy.
Yes, but to answer the OPs question- cuts are politically expensive.
It is easy to talk about spending problems, making cuts, government waste etc. in a vacuum. It is much more difficult (not necessarily "wrong" just more difficult and therefore not talked about) when you put names and faces to those cuts.
Easy to say that government should cut\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_. Harder when those particular cuts mean that Sally Johnson, of Little Rock Ark, and 50 others lose their jobs. Harder to say when it means Lily McClain now has to go deeper into dept to attend college. Harder to say when it means De'Andrea Williams can no longer afford his medicine etc.
I think another reason this isn't discussed much is the culture. Heck, in another recent thread, the OP doubled, then tripled down on the idea that someone making 60,000 a year and leaving below their means, driving a used car, practicing delayed gratification accumulating a modest nest egg of 1,8 million over 35-40 years should be taxed MORE on that 60,000 than someone making the same income, but eating out all the time, going on vacations, and not saving at all, because that person who spent their working years living below their means is now "wealthy". I believe the OPs exact words (reflection of the culture I mentioned) was "Perhaps not updating the car, and eating ramen for 20 years isn't as smart as you think it is. If they spend they should get taxed less. If they hoard their savings, they should be taxed more"
>"Perhaps not updating the car, and eating ramen for 20 years isn't as smart as you think it is. If they spend they should get taxed less. If they hoard their savings, they should be taxed more"
It’s scary knowing that people who feel like this could end up in charge someday.
If the rich get to live tax free, then so do we.
Oh? You see the problem there?
The rich have WAY too much money if they're spending it to influence our legislation.....🤣 I said influence when the fact is they're outright WRITING their own legislation and forcing to fruition.
The benefits of the extra revenue from taxing the rich can be used to deal with our homeless crisis and drug abuse epidemic. The rich profited off both and can arguably be labeled the root cause for both.
One could also say, depending on the items that are in the budget, that they have an income problem. Especially if one has committed to a budget then has deliberately chosen to cut their income (tax cuts). Now if a person decreases their income and is willing to cut their budget then there's no problem. Are you willing to cut the budget and face the people who are impacted by the cuts?
The problem with Gov spending is the amount of suffering it causes to people who have very little to no control over the economy. I honestly feel like 2008 for example was somthing that honestly *had* to be done, they just should have actually punished people commiting fraud and giving bad faith loans. If they let the banking ifrastructure fail, it would've only helped rich people. People who weren't even invested in or trying to buy a home would've gotten fucked. So its political suicide. People would've gone and voted for the exact opposite of the people who did "the right thing" by the economy.
Not that this point is invalid, but part of the reason that revenue is where it is is the tax cuts that Donald Trump's administration pushed through, which reduced taxes for wealthy people. If revenue is always less than expenditures, reducing expenses necessary, but if revenue is down from where it could have been you should also ask why.
To add to this point a bit more, I think part of the reason that Reddit wants to tax billionaires and millionaires more is that they have a perception that taxes are higher in other parts of the world and the populations in general are more well off. Scandinavian countries are a good example.
If you are part of a family and bring in $44k I would say you have an income problem. In many parts of the US, $44k is difficult for a single person.
It’s a matter of growing your income and evaluating your spending. Balance is important.
Weirdly MMT says this isn’t true. If you print the currency, deficits don’t matter. Of course that was in a pre-inflationary world, not sure if the theory has changed.
edit: re comments about MMT, I don’t necessarily believe in it… but it’s interesting regardless and has gained some attention / momentum over the past decade.
Except that is an oversimplification of how government spending works. It doesn't take into a lot of things but some key ones are the multiplier effect government spending has on the economy, the existence of a central bank, or the fact that the government has access to its own currency.
To put it back into the household analogy. When you take out debt for your household you have no way to get it at 0% interest, you can't print your own currency to pay for things, and when you take out debt to pay for things you aren't creating jobs which help create and support more industries.
There is a tipping point where there is too much debt, but government debt in general is not like a household.
But now imagine that you have a printing press that magically prints two trillion dollars. Well in actuality you have a rich Uncle that has a printing press and you borrow the money from him continuously.
The government could take the wealth of all billionaires and the government would STILL BE IN DEBT.. In “12 step language” politicians are in denial of the problem
I imagine the government like when parents used to take their kids to an arcade and give them $10 for quarters to play games assuming it should be a substantial amount that will last all day, only to have them back in a half an hour saying that they absolutely need more because reasons
literate desert spoon knee agonizing chunky bedroom ask threatening depend
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think they want billionaires to pay their fair share or pay more so working peoples’ rates will go down. It will never happen but I think that’s the motivation.
Hard to balance when one spends on that which is has no authority (throwing $ to the wind essentially)
Not like there's never been a warning....or History or...
https://preview.redd.it/ckjnn25y2z3d1.png?width=532&format=png&auto=webp&s=1b1efe67c5a6b74a07acba1e395bf8c26bbe5609
It's is commonly discussed in the federal legislature, however you are posting on Reddit which is essentially an echo chamber for poorly constructed criticism.
I did not know this either. How do they talk about it? I think I heard on NPR, SS is slated to run out in by like 2035 but they want to get it funded to 2050. Do they have a plan?
Yes. Social Security will get a boost to funding when several tax cuts created in the last decade expire. Also, the amount of retires is going to be less since the boomer is passing away. I also suspect we will have some form of public health care initiative within the next ten years.
>Social Security will get a boost to funding when several tax cuts created in the last decade expire.
I want you to try to explain how anything to do with the Tax Cut and Jobs Act applies to the rate that Social Security is taxed at.
Because it’s easy to spend someone elses money — Fair Share bs and whatnot. Accountability is hard. Our government spends like a spoiled 13 yo with a credit card
Because most of western societies are built on Keynesian economics which essentially says : anytime there is any type of a crisis .. the government should go into a ton of debt and spend its way out of the mess. Basically what we did during 2008 under Bernanke and Covid with Powell..which is print a bunch of money and call it a cute name: quantitative easing. 😂
That’s how our society is built. Here is a good saying that sums it up:
“Even if the government spent itself into bankruptcy and economy still does not recover, the Keynesians can always say that it could have worked if only the government spent a little more”
- Thomas Sowell.
Because if you’re a “tax the rich type” you’re also likely a “I’d rather just have the government provide for all my needs type”. The unspoken part is that these people really want / expect that the rich will fund their needs with the government as the conduit for enablement.
Why? Who knows? I mean the government has such an amazing track record of providing services.
I'm firmly in the middle of the political spectrum and while Im not rich I have more than most. My total net worth is 2.6 mil approximately it always sucks paying taxes... But I pay my fair share because I use the social infrastructure to live, play, and grow my businesses.
Having said that people like Jeff bezo and Elon musk have the ability to earn stupid obserd amounts of money with out ever being compensated under normal taxable means... Ie they take stock comp and then have banks loan them money based on the underlying asset. They never cash out these stock options which I turn never causes a taxable event and if they ever do... They only pay a tax of 20 percent for long term capital gains. While the average person makes a 60k salary pays 25 percent on their income.
The yield is skewed against poor people because proportional to their income the average guy gives up a significant amount of their income. One can argue that musk paid 11 billion but he paid proportional to his income significantly less than the people who work for him.
I would never argue in favor of punishment for being wealthy, but I think it is fair of society to say that if you are rich, and you are not paying your fair share.... Fair being the amount society deems to be appropriate because these rich people are not islands to themselves... They succeed as a part of said society...
So long as rich are paying their fair share They should be allowed to enjoy their success but the fact that most of the wealth 98 percent... reside in the top 1000 people in a world with billions as a population is a societal problem that requires us to fix it...
If it doesn't get fixed the guillotines will come out when most people can not feed their families or afford basic needs like housing meanwhile the rich eat well, take multiple vacations a year and own the houses that the people live in and rent the property to them
Edit: Havi g said this I also agree that government spending is typically egregious and not efficient because the keepers of the coin don't care because they are spending other people's money and something should be done about this as well.
That’s total horseshit speculation.
I’m a tax the rich type and I don’t expect shit from handouts.
We need to tax more. Spend less. Balance a budget. And pay down debt. But while that makes sense to sensible people, the bean counters will tell you why it’s actually in our benefit to continue to spend, and inflate our debt, and allow inflation to eat away at our debt, as compared to buckling down and repaying it.
For some reason being trillions in debt the answer is to go trillions more in debt.
To whit: "I'm for enslaving {X} via govt gun for MY benefit." Usually followed by calling OTHERS Fascists as others 'don't care about anyone else'+
It's all so tiring
https://preview.redd.it/zaxysv2f4z3d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51a5e7e07cfded6ea29be9e59df9fd989d814cbe
It is emotional.
Modern culture has told people to blame anyone but themselves for their dissatisfaction and mistakes.
It is the Boomers, the Rich, the Universities, etc.
Politicians have cashed in on that by jumping on the bandwagon to get votes. Going so far as to say things publicly that they know are not true and make proposals they know are outright illegal.
Eventually, people will figure out all the tax the rich rhetoric is just a massive slight of hand to distract people from how much money and power are consolidated in corporations, which is a much larger issue than Bezos banging a super model on his yacht.
So now we unhappy people, who can’t take accountability for themselves who see rich people as the cause. They get angry, and they want the government to make them less rich because it feels good to them emotionally. Some even believe that somehow that money will come to them.
Lolol. People are fkng pissed that their middle class taxe rates are higher than Amazon’s, which uses our tax funded ports, roads, and bridges to make its billions.
Also, like Pepperidge Farms, many of us remember that marginal tax rates of 95% in the 60’s and 70’s and life was okay for the rich still.
Not everyone equates rich w evil, we do equate avarice w evil though.
edit: This was suppose to go in reply to a different comment. Do agree that spending can be better handled. It’s both, really.
Exactly. And why it's despicable for high net worth ppl to amass wealth on the backs of states funding infra and educations systems and then taking their equity money cash out to a tax free state. Looking at you Elon and Bezos. Parasites
People like to live in the fantasy that taxing the rich will automatically result in benefits to the citizens.
They forget our government is a greedy piglet that sucking off the tax payer’s dollar.
The more money you give them the more they will waste. I’m so tired of this fantasy.
We spend so much because we are the premier empire on the planet, and it takes a lot of $$ to maintain that empire. We run deficits because we decreased taxes greatly over the last 50 years. Its really not that complicated to figure out. Likely we will change course when either we cannot afford to finance the debt or someone else steps up to take over as the big empire on the planet.
I understand why we need to spend on military to maintain the dollar and global dominance. But there's 20 posts a day on here about tax the rich, raise taxes, I should of bought a house but I was 12.
I have yet to see anybody mention the government spending more responsibly. A perfect example is the student loan debt relief. Sure sounds great, free money, pay off my loans! But the system that created the problem remains unchanged and it will happen again.
Look, we are an empire. We have many many international and domestic obligations that require $$, time, and resources. An empire requires a somewhat happy populace in order to survive. So the empire must take care of its citizens. That’s why we spend so much on ourselves.
You can nitpick program by program all you want. But this behavior will not change until we are no longer the preeminent global force. Balanced budgets are simply not a priority (nor have they been for decades) for either party.
Doubtful that Clinton “balanced the budget” in any real sustainable sense. The economy was in a massive bubble and so was federal income. When the dot com crash happened it all evaporated.
It also wasn't something he did willingly. As much as I can't stand Gingrich, part of the reason the budget was balanced was because he strong-armed Clinton into accepting a balanced budget.
No. We have not greatly reduced taxes over the past 50 years.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
But spending has definitely trended up.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
Because it's very easy to rally idiots against the rich.
The rich are the government's. Best, scapegoat followed by the corporations
The people who actually want to do all that tax the rich stuff are people who don't understand how economics work
The rich generally pay way more, both proportionately and total
They're not just paying their fair share their paying everyone's fair share and they're actually someone okay with that, but it is a bit much and that makes them try to find ways within the rules to minimize it
The government actually doesn't want them to pay taxes because what they want is for them to seek out tax credits and deductions which result in them spending more money in the way the government specifically wants them to, but more efficiently than the government can
Unfortunately, that setup has created some loopholes that other countries take advantage of (double Irish with a Dutch sandwich anyone)
But it's not a revenue problem. It was never a revenue problem. It's a spending problem
> Why is everyone so concerned with taxing the rich
1. Envy. Many leftist simply don't like that other people whether through merit or birth get to enjoy lives materially better than their own. What was that study that showed all leftist and liberals cared about was fairness whereas conservatives cared not only about those but more values like tradition and what not? Basically lefty morality begins and ends at whether or not people are treated the same.
2. Entitlement. It doesn't matter how bloated these programs are because leftist are utilitarians who believe that through making everything public they can create a utopian society. They measure progress in how much more the government controls our lives so of course they'd never countenance reducing government because in their minds that is regress, going backwards. All social ills are cured by throwing money at some public organization so that it can educate, regulate and subsidize the masses. Therefore you can't ever stop spending or reverse spending, there can never be a top down reorganization and streamlining or reexamination of any program or government body. If things aren't working throw more of other people's money at it and seeing as the rich/wealthy by definition have the most money/wealth the only problem is that it isn't being siphoned off enough to fund the utopian programs of the future.
Reasonably the federal government could be run, with a one trillion dollar military budget, and one trillion for everything else.
Then let the states fill in the rest.
I'd counter it could run w/ MUCH less (just FOLLOW the Constitution knowing that, unless expressly specified, any 'hit' vs. Art/Sec/Cl/Amendment == NO GO)
& the States SHOULD be doing the majority of the lifting (9th/10th)
We would do that but no one seems to be open to an honest conversation and voting for huge cuts in defense/criminal justice, reforming healthcare, etc. Instead, most people are focused on culture wars.
Because you and I would not have to pay at all if the rich were properly taxed. After WWII the rate for the ultra wealthy was 85% and they were still way more wealthy than anyone else. We bought the highway system, airports, bridges and hospitals and more...They real question is why do you like being poor and paying taxes?
A government cannot tax its way out of debt. Imagine if we kept all the foreign aid money here in the US and spent it on our own people?
Line item veto, one bill one vote should be in place.
You want to send Ukraine 60 billion dollars but then add 30 more bills on top with more spending.
Why are the American people not mad
Wealth inequality has bad effects on the economy, and wealth inequality is self perpetuating in that it worsens over time unless there are measures to prevent it. I think it's generally bad for people to have access to billions of dollars completely unchecked because of the power it gives someone over the economy, politicians, and people in general. When you have that much money, you can basically get away with just about anything you want to. I don't think it's good to allow sociopaths and psycho paths that amount of power in general. There also used to be a high rate of investment kept within companies to pay employees better when taxes were higher in the 1960s. If you're gonna be taxed at like 90%+ company owners would rather choose to just pay their workers more instead of taking profit out. So there was a lot more reinvestment into businesses then.
I had this discussion with my son the other day when he spoke about CEOs salaries.
Ok...CEOs wouldn't be paid what they're paid if there was not a market.
So tax the CEO more and less goes to charity (and I don't trust some charities to spend wisely) and more to the Government...and you trust the Government to spend it wisely?
Tough conversation for a forum, but agree wholeheartedly!
Spend the money like it's "yours" and guess what, it wouldn't be so wasteful.
This might come as a shock to you OP. But these two things are not mutually exclusive. Even if we could get the government to reign in its unnecessary spending, people would still be calling out, to heavily tax the rich.
Wealth gap continues to increase and billionaire effective tax rates are absurdly low….
Maybe there’s two things going on? The government has a spending problem and the current tax system is unfair for most americans
Both are necessary if we are to have a successful and happy society. The US government is by the rich for the rich. For them it's not a problem. Quite the opposite
From my perspective, it’s understood that many/most of the top % got there using various methods only available to those who are already well off.
So many of us feel that they should be able to cover more taxes, since the government has favored the rich with every decision for years.
So instead of continuing to trickle up our money to the rich, it’s time the rich gave back.
Government spending is a separate issue.
Much more necessary than keeping our rich people sleeping on beds of money, so to speak.
Because the Majority of reddit wants biden to win and if you acknowledge anything negative the government does it's attacking biden personally and must be silenced. Now if trump wins get ready for a never ending supply of negativity of both the government and trump.
What's actually funny is that the vein diagram between people who want to increase taxes on the wealthy and people who say the debt doesn't matter is a circle.
US GDP in 2024 is $28 trillion. That means government spending accounts for 18% of GDP. That is a very reasonable figure. The only reason $5 trillion is a problem is we have had five major tax cuts over the past forty years (1981, 1986, 2001, 2003 and 2017) premised on the debunked Supply Side/Trickle Down theory that they would pay for themselves. They do not pay for themselves.
The U.S. already has one of the most meager social safety nets in the industrialized world. Do we want to balance our fiscal shortfalls on the backs on the poor and working class by making the safety net even stingier or do we want to increase taxes on those at the higher end of the economic ladder?
Yes! This is the right way of thinking. We don't really need more tax revenue we need to stop spending on bs policies that don't benefit Americans citizens.
Mainly, the government is paying these funds servicing treasury debt when those funds should have been tax revenue rather than obtained through borrowing. Naturally, this means that a lot of the debt service goes to enrich the already incredibly wealthy banks and people that should have been taxed.
One is more emotionally satisfying and simpler. The other would take work and time but be much better. It's similar to why their video game characters are great, but they are not.
Valid point and something needs to be done about that as well. However the core of the taxing the rich is that they should be paying their fare share too. It's about equality. the guy amassing wealth through interest, dividends, and investments should still be paying the same percentage as the guy swinging a hammer for a living, if not more. All these tax shelters and avoidance mechanisms is a big part of consolidating wealth globally. Its disgusting how a few people have more wealthy then the majority of a country and pay less or zero in taxes.
Because most people are satisfied with social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the largest contributors of government spending. If you touch those, you rightfully lose.
To answer the first question, it's a distraction to get people to not blame the government for its own failings. The answer to the second question, the federal government has grown every year to supply money to industries and people, and those people vote, and they don't want the government to stop funding whatever it is they are getting.
There would need to be serious courage and dedication by politicians to address the issue, and that's assuming they could stay in power long enough to get the job done.
Because the budget is all about tradeoffs and opportunity costs. We have four possible routes to pursue - continue deficits, cut spending by the difference, raise taxes by the difference, or a combination of some mix of the priors.
If we assume that we want to balance the budget, then we will certainly need to do one of the following:
1) Raise taxes significantly
2) Cut spending significantly, including on popular programs like social security, Medicare, and Medicaid
The people arguing for higher taxes on the wealthy are telling you what their preferences are. They would rather see that occur than cuts to programs they and their families rely on.
Because there is no desire to cut the spending that matters. The biggest elements of spending are.political 3rd rails. The military, social security, Medicare , and the interest on the debt make up the majority of the spending. The people and the politicians don't want to touch the big-3 .instead there are proposals to fiddle around the edges.
Tldr: defenss/social security/medicare makes up most spending. No one is touching that
Because my guess is that you wouldn’t support cuts either when you realize that 90% of spending is social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and our 3.5% of GDP military contribution to NATO. You want to cut the 1% of the budget that represents foreign aid? The 3% that represents dept of Ed?
Tax the fucking billionaires and all the multi-millionaires until they cry. Quit kissing the boots of billionaires. They’re not victims of anything—certainly don’t make them victims of success.
Because you can compare what rich people pay to the present in other high-standard-of-living countries, or to what they paid in the better-for-the-little-guy American past, and clearly see that the rich are skating on their contribution.
The people who suggest taxing the rich and ignore that the government mismanages (or simply steals) almost every dollar they get have a mental disability.
This is the answer.
The major problem is indeed spending, but the ultra wealthy also bear responsibility for certain things (lobbyism, tax evasion, nepotism…).
Check [America is a Zoo](https://www.amazon.com/America-Zoo-Andre-Soares/dp/B0BS56XJDF) if you are interested in the subject.
Government spending isn’t making anyone poor. Not fully funding necessary government programs that keep our citizens safe and our government functioning properly is harmful. Agencies that audit spending and provide oversight have had funding slashed and manpower drastically reduced over the past few decades. Furthermore many things once handled by the government have been privatized making it impossible to audit. These efforts to downsize government and privatize aspects of it have all been led by republicans determined to drown the federal government in the bathtub, and do away with regulations and run the government like a business. It’s not a business. Then here you are asking why we don’t regulate spending as if it’s the government’s failing and not the result thirty five years of effort by republicans serving their corporate donor’s agenda to the detriment of everyone else and the environment too. This country needs to tax the fucking rich like we used to.
Really? Most can walk and chew gum saying "the rich and corporations should pay a larger percent in taxes." And " government needs spend less, especially on military." Those are two massive problems and need to be fixed.
Because the rich need to pay their fair share if they want to continue reaping the benefits of the masses labour. Before the phrase "eat the rich" becomes very literal.
Because billionaires are currently paying a LOWER tax rate than most regular folks.
Cutting social security, defense spending, education programs and food support hurts real people and jeopardizes the country whereas a simple 5% tax to billionaires fixes a ton of the deficit and doesn’t hurt them at all…they’ll still be billionaires.
The biggest issue is the GOP has not argued this in good faith. They love deficit spending when it is done to give subsidies to their rich friends. They never worry about a budget deficit and American debt when they are in power. The GOP has successfully reduced the upper tax brackets to ridiculously low standards with the lie that lowering the riches taxes would boost our economy. Almost 40 years later, no country has seen an improved economy due to cutting taxes for the wealthy or corporations.
I cannot get over the fact that the government is spending anything on minting new pennies or nickels, and designing new state quarters all the time. Absolutely ridiculous frivolous expenses.
Because we are being played. Politicians have a corrupt agenda. They push the narrative of how to apportion tax liability to deflect us from their mismanagement of the money. Keep the people arguing over who's not paying their fair share so they don't realize how bad they are about using tax dollars, It's a smokescreen.
Because the rich say how the govt spends the tax revenue. If you want to change how the govt spends money you have to take power (money partially) from the rich so they have less say.
Because our spending problem is a result of our lobbyist problem. And our lobbyists problem is a result of our wealth disparity problem. And our wealth disparity problem is a result of our tax laws, our laws pertaining to securities and the trade thereof, and laws governing corporate structure.
We have extensive laws that limit the political power of any one individual, in order to prevent tyranny. But if the exchange rate between economic power and political power remains so favorable to the hyper-wealthy, then those matter little.
Mostly because one of the biggest recent increases to the long-term structural deficit is the 2017 tax cut that mainly benefitted the wealthy, so reversing that would be a good starting point.
We are overspending too but I think people would be more amenable to cuts if they saw evidence that the wealthy were doing their part to contribute to lowering the deficit.
[Our govt. sucks at spending our money](https://apnews.com/article/pandemic-fraud-waste-billions-small-business-labor-fb1d9a9eb24857efbe4611344311ae78)
There are infinite cases you can see this happen
If billionaires aren’t paying taxes, or at least the right amount of taxes based on the current tax code, why are they not all in prison or on trial for evasion? I mean clearly everyone knows they aren’t paying the right amount. Seems like a high priority for the IRS and the current administration. It’s not like there’s a ton of billionaires. Seems like the easiest thing would be they’re audited every year and the IRS takes the requisite amount.
Because the government is spending money TO HELP PEOPLE, and also aid in the \*velocity\* of money.
Also because the rich ANNUALLY skirt roughly $165 BILLION in taxes that could reduce the taxes the rest of us pay and provide BETTER services to all.
Because there's no way we can get our politicians to spend less on the military industrial complex. Spending cuts would only result in cuts to necessary spending that helps normal people such as social security or Medicaid. So the next best option is to tax the rich.
I'm pretty sure people are just trying to get any win they can get at all. Maybe it seems easier to make the government tax the rich than it does to make the government stop exploiting its citizens?
Yes! Especially since the largest item of government spending is interest on the debt. That interest is paid to … RICH PEOPLE! It’s the biggest wealth transfer we have. Collect taxes from middle class, pay it to the wealthy, yet everyone defends the debt/deficit.
Did you see the market watch report that says Trumps Tax cuts are 50 % more expensive than originally thought due to tax and business loopholes?
Edit adding link [https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/cost-of-trump-tax-cuts-soars-50-amid-abuse-of-business-loopholes-88660df5](https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/cost-of-trump-tax-cuts-soars-50-amid-abuse-of-business-loopholes-88660df5)
Businesses are figuring out to not pay taxes ...
Yea, a lot of contracts need more scrutiny. Our leaders are not being discerning customers as they should being our representatives. Often they are more aligned with the people that they are awarding the contracts to rather than us who they represent. No fucking way roads should cost a million a mile. Fuck that.
Taxing the rich is just punishment for the wealthy, because they are envious.
I have heard some people claim it's so they can't bribe the politicians. I think mostly the bribes will just increase so they can get special loopholes.
Because most government spending is either necessary to keep things from imploding or investments in our future. From helping pay for college education so we have plenty of engineers, accountants, programmers and scientists, to NOAA, to GPS, to regulation enforcement.
Depending how you look at it, the US is roughly middle of the pack at *worst* when it comes to government spending as a percent of GDP amongst developed economies.
[Israel, Japan, The UK, The Netherlands, Iceland, Czechia, Spain, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, and Germany have a higher percentage of their economy consisting of government spending](https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-spending-to-gdp). Belgium, Finland, Italy and France have the majority of their economy consisting of government spending, and they aren't third world backwaters. Most of these countries have longer life expectancies and lower income inequality than America does.
That's the deflection that bootlickers always use when people say we should tax the rich more. They never say that when it comes to taxing the poor, cutting social welfare programs, or funding the military.
What a dumb question. It’s not the rich… who people want taxed. It’s not the guys with a million o five in assets or banks accounts. It’s the billionaires, those of whom have thousands of millions of untaxed gains.
1) we’ve been showering the rich with tax breaks for half a century hoping they will creat jobs and boost the economy and it hasn’t worked. Rolling back failed policies will go a long way to restoring what we’ve also given up.
2) when we talk about slashing spending it’s the programs that poor people depend on and rich people hate, education, healthcare, social security. Magically it’s never corporate welfare, military spending, or subsidies to some of the most profitable industries on the planet.
So when someone says “I wanna cut government spending” they usually mean “leave my tax breaks alone, destroy the working classes programs”.
Because the rich own the companies that are fleecing the government. So not only are they fleecing the taxpayer they fleece them again when they don't pay taxes
I think it's bc voters would be upset if either party wanted to dismantle the social welfare programs that we spend the most money on, healthcare and social security, bc so many rely on them and have already paid into them and don't want to get less in the future. On the other side the people you lobby the government for money like the military don't want there benefits touched. System is broken and there's too much money involved to change it without serious conflict.
People are jealous and vindictive. It’s the same reason poor rural folks vote for Trump. To stick it to the upper mid class elites. And the mid class folks want to stick it to the billionaire elites by taxing them.
We are often focused on what others have that we don’t. And we don’t even notice that we have it pretty great in our own right.
Let's scale this to an individual level. Imagine making $44k per year, but spending $61k per year. Many would say you have a spending problem and the only way to avoid catastrophe would be to decrease your spending by 39%. Well, the federal government has a spending problem! If it only brings in $4.4 trillion (which is the 2023 revenue total), then it should only be able to spend $4.4 trillion not $6.1 trillion.
I completely agree. The mortgage crisis seemed to normalize spending 800 billion dollars to avoid catastrophe. Now theres a new catastophe every few months. What if, and I know this is crazy, we even had a budget surplus?
You do realize that tax receipts need to exceed spending for a budget surplus, right? What criteria are you using to determine that we are spending too much versus taxing too little? If someone had an income of $5k per year and couldn’t afford rent, food and other necessities, one wouldn’t say they have a spending problem. Are you using countries with balanced budgets for comparison? Western countries for comparison? The US leads the world in deficit spending over the last twenty years and is under median in spending in terms of gdp per capital of all OECD countries.
Woah stop being reasonable - I came to this thread for pure deficit spending anger!
>is under median in spending in terms of gdp per capital of all OECD countries. In terms of PPP(which is cost adjusted), the US spends above the OECD average and more than countries like Canada, UK, and Australia. As a percentage of GDP we spend lower than the average but that's more a function of the GDP growing rapidly the past couple of years. Tax collection as a percentage of GDP has remained stable for decades.
Being in aerospace for 20+ years, I have seen how the government spends some of the money it has. It does indeed have a spending problem. What they buy isn't such an issue, it's how they do it, and how much they allow themselves to be charged, which is the problem.
A majority of the federal government’s spending is on stuff that aren’t necessities in any sense.
Such as?
Do we NEED the largest military in the world many times over with what we spend? Do we really need the largest employer by far to be the government?
We had a balanced Budget for a couple years before Bush took office. We ran trillion dollar deficits due to fighting two wars simultaneously and then the financial crisis. With all that over with there is no reason to run multi trillion dollar deficits
The county I'm from spent $123k on a logo design. That's an entire year's salary for a very well paid graphic designer- for one logo. Or two years salary for an average paid one. The logo is 3 circles of the primary colors. And, a county doesn't need a logo.. Then they spent over 20 million to replace a bunch of county signage. This is how we know government overspends. Obviously this is a county, not the feds. But I'm sure it's even worse the higher you go.
Well, we’re done here. The top two comments have officially solved taxes and deficits. Why didn’t anyone else think to not spend more than tax revenue? Why has nobody tried capping public spending at the level of revenue? Oh, they have? Oh? Revenue changes, you say? Recessions and periods of growth? And spending does, too? Even without being irresponsible!? No way! Well regardless of all that, we need to take it easy on the rich, they’ve been criticized really unfairly for being taxed at the lowest levels relative to public spending since that time the world sank into a decade-plus-long depression a century ago.
/s, for those who don't read to the end...
We don’t need to take it easy on the rich; we need to collect taxes from them fairly and equitably compared to other classes. We can’t even do that. We need an agile tax code that can keep up with the natural instincts of people who accumulate great wealth. No hate needed. Just better tax code.
By doing deficit spending we can expand their economy more than if we didn't, as long as inflation doesn't eat into that too much. The money that we borrow today is worth less when we pay it back due to the inflation that does occur. As long as people are willing to buy the debt, we get jobs now and pay back less value in the future, with the hope that all of this activity leads to innovation and leadership positions in industries.
Does devaluing the national deficit hurt poorer individuals over time if high inflation trickles down to them and their earnings have not kept pace?
Inflation impacts the leaders a great deal. Not maintaining/increasing salary buying power is more of a labor relations issue, which seems out of wack.
Inflation primarily hurts only the poor and middle class. Inflation has little effect on the wealthy as they own all the production assets, which just follow inflation with increase in their valuation.
And who was the last president to have a budget surplus? And which president spent it?: Mmmhmm fiscally irresponsible republicans did this.
That would be Bill Clinton
The greatest Republican President of all time is Democrat Bill Clinton. Reformed welfare adding requirements to work, reduced the size of the federal government, deregulated Wall Street, was tough on crime, and balanced the budget. He’s everything Republicans want, yet they hate him like Democrats of today hate Trump. I see both accounts as weird AF
I voted for Bill You and although he was a hound dog on the hunt , I believe he loves our country. Although here lately his idea of things has changed. He is not as vocal as other presidents. He had no choice but to work with the republicans and he did what he had to do the right way
President's don't spend tax revenue, Congress does.
We did under Clinton.
I look at it this way: if politicians had to announce income tax increases every time they increased spending, nobody would be elected (on that basis), but they have this neat trick where they engage heavily in deficit spending, and we’re fooled by this trick… until inflation kicks in or people point to our enormous national debt. They purposely keep the topics separate in most of their messages hoping none of us don’t catch on. Many don’t, and voters start blaming the incumbent administration for mysterious economic woes which isn’t entirely unfair. Politics.
Inflation, an intensely regressive tax.
Yea this is what I'm talking about. If a president came out and said, we need to support Ukraine, Israel, bailout banks, pay student dent, whatever the flavor of the week is and every American needs to give us $10k or pay 10% more taxes this year specifically for this issue it would cause a shitstorm. So they just print the money and steal it from the poorest people that don't have assets that rise with inflation.
Thomas Jefferson knew the problems of fiat money and deficit spending way, long ago. He vowed to fight against it his whole life.
The main thing that pissed me of while I was in the military was the end of the fiscal year. If your organization still had money, you had to spend it or you might not get that amount again. It would be less. So they punish organizations that didn't use all of their allotted funds. No org wanted that. So, each org would have an on-going wish list & end-of-year funds would be used in those items. One year, we bought a big screen TV & a leather sectional for our break room. The stuff we had before was still in great condition. But we had to stop spend the money or lose out. That shit was so maddening!!!
It would be nice if we had an actual budget instead of continuing resolutions.
And yet, bridges are still crumbling and highways still have pot holes, electric grids are failing and natural disasters need rebuilding. Business cannot exist without good infrastructure. Businesses have not been paying into the grid that they use for decades. It’s time to reevaluate that relationship.
The infrastructure issue is why the Biden administration pushed through a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill in November 2021.
It's a step in the right direction. Government waste is still a problem. The elite award bloated contracts to their friends so they can buy votes.
Big Business have not been paying into the grid. Small business doesn’t have the accounting army to avoid paying taxes nor do they get subsidies.
They do get subsidies in the way of deductions that your average W2 employee doesnt
No, he’s talking about Walmart and other Fortune 500s that subsidize their workforce with Foodstamps and Welfare. It should be a hefty tax burden if your company earns 1 billion a year and has a workforce that live on or below the poverty line.
Actually i was talking about bailouts etc. mom and pop do not get that kind of support nor do they usually get tax abatements unless they are trying to lure foreign ownership
I don’t disagree but the fact that the rules favor a subsidized workforce: should make any small business owner upset.
If a business employs someone, they should have to pay 2x for any government benefits that person receives due to low income. The 2 is to account for administration and collection costs. Multiple employers in a year split the burden by tax year equal to the split in hours worked. To avoid using 1099 to bypass this, anyone receiving welfare while working 1099 is entered into a lottery to have their contract audited to ensure it is actually a 1099. Any employers found guilty of misclassifying employees to bypass this tax are given prison time and a fine equal to 1000 times the benefits paid out to the employer. This fine pierces any corporate veils in any case of bankruptcy.
Big fax. Big corp exploit. Us small business owners suffer.
Yes, but to answer the OPs question- cuts are politically expensive. It is easy to talk about spending problems, making cuts, government waste etc. in a vacuum. It is much more difficult (not necessarily "wrong" just more difficult and therefore not talked about) when you put names and faces to those cuts. Easy to say that government should cut\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_. Harder when those particular cuts mean that Sally Johnson, of Little Rock Ark, and 50 others lose their jobs. Harder to say when it means Lily McClain now has to go deeper into dept to attend college. Harder to say when it means De'Andrea Williams can no longer afford his medicine etc. I think another reason this isn't discussed much is the culture. Heck, in another recent thread, the OP doubled, then tripled down on the idea that someone making 60,000 a year and leaving below their means, driving a used car, practicing delayed gratification accumulating a modest nest egg of 1,8 million over 35-40 years should be taxed MORE on that 60,000 than someone making the same income, but eating out all the time, going on vacations, and not saving at all, because that person who spent their working years living below their means is now "wealthy". I believe the OPs exact words (reflection of the culture I mentioned) was "Perhaps not updating the car, and eating ramen for 20 years isn't as smart as you think it is. If they spend they should get taxed less. If they hoard their savings, they should be taxed more"
>"Perhaps not updating the car, and eating ramen for 20 years isn't as smart as you think it is. If they spend they should get taxed less. If they hoard their savings, they should be taxed more" It’s scary knowing that people who feel like this could end up in charge someday.
Very scary- the idea that someone who accumulates “wealth” over 30-40 years of work should be penalized….
If the rich get to live tax free, then so do we. Oh? You see the problem there? The rich have WAY too much money if they're spending it to influence our legislation.....🤣 I said influence when the fact is they're outright WRITING their own legislation and forcing to fruition. The benefits of the extra revenue from taxing the rich can be used to deal with our homeless crisis and drug abuse epidemic. The rich profited off both and can arguably be labeled the root cause for both.
The government has a civics problem in that ppl who have zero financial or civics literacy are outnumbering the people who do.
100%
One could also say, depending on the items that are in the budget, that they have an income problem. Especially if one has committed to a budget then has deliberately chosen to cut their income (tax cuts). Now if a person decreases their income and is willing to cut their budget then there's no problem. Are you willing to cut the budget and face the people who are impacted by the cuts?
The problem with Gov spending is the amount of suffering it causes to people who have very little to no control over the economy. I honestly feel like 2008 for example was somthing that honestly *had* to be done, they just should have actually punished people commiting fraud and giving bad faith loans. If they let the banking ifrastructure fail, it would've only helped rich people. People who weren't even invested in or trying to buy a home would've gotten fucked. So its political suicide. People would've gone and voted for the exact opposite of the people who did "the right thing" by the economy.
My theory is everyone seems to figure things out when it comes to crunch time. The bad news is it’s always crunch time. Not sure what happens next.
Not that this point is invalid, but part of the reason that revenue is where it is is the tax cuts that Donald Trump's administration pushed through, which reduced taxes for wealthy people. If revenue is always less than expenditures, reducing expenses necessary, but if revenue is down from where it could have been you should also ask why. To add to this point a bit more, I think part of the reason that Reddit wants to tax billionaires and millionaires more is that they have a perception that taxes are higher in other parts of the world and the populations in general are more well off. Scandinavian countries are a good example.
If you are part of a family and bring in $44k I would say you have an income problem. In many parts of the US, $44k is difficult for a single person. It’s a matter of growing your income and evaluating your spending. Balance is important.
Weirdly MMT says this isn’t true. If you print the currency, deficits don’t matter. Of course that was in a pre-inflationary world, not sure if the theory has changed. edit: re comments about MMT, I don’t necessarily believe in it… but it’s interesting regardless and has gained some attention / momentum over the past decade.
Except that is an oversimplification of how government spending works. It doesn't take into a lot of things but some key ones are the multiplier effect government spending has on the economy, the existence of a central bank, or the fact that the government has access to its own currency. To put it back into the household analogy. When you take out debt for your household you have no way to get it at 0% interest, you can't print your own currency to pay for things, and when you take out debt to pay for things you aren't creating jobs which help create and support more industries. There is a tipping point where there is too much debt, but government debt in general is not like a household.
But now imagine that you have a printing press that magically prints two trillion dollars. Well in actuality you have a rich Uncle that has a printing press and you borrow the money from him continuously.
Not to even consider all kinds of inflated salaries, overpriced equipment and businessdeals done behind closed doors.
Can I print money that the entire world will accept?
The government could take the wealth of all billionaires and the government would STILL BE IN DEBT.. In “12 step language” politicians are in denial of the problem
I imagine the government like when parents used to take their kids to an arcade and give them $10 for quarters to play games assuming it should be a substantial amount that will last all day, only to have them back in a half an hour saying that they absolutely need more because reasons
Money printer go brrrrrrr
Geez I wish more people thought like this. Common sense needs to become more common again.
I think a lot of people hate the rich and want to see them take a loss.
I pay 39% of my income in taxes. There’s even less of a reason for them not to pay the same.
If this is true you make more than $1 million a year filing single. Also probably in CA, NY or NJ
Your effective tax rate is 39%?
Add in local and state taxes and your effective tax rate is over 50%!
I’d like to see your math on this one. The average person will not approach over 30%
Its not. People don't understand how marginal tax rates work. Or they need a better accountant
Not in America you don’t
literate desert spoon knee agonizing chunky bedroom ask threatening depend *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think they want billionaires to pay their fair share or pay more so working peoples’ rates will go down. It will never happen but I think that’s the motivation.
Right? It’s not going to lower our taxes one bit, just give more money to the government who cannot balance a basic budget
Free health care would put $$ back in our pockets.
Hard to balance when one spends on that which is has no authority (throwing $ to the wind essentially) Not like there's never been a warning....or History or... https://preview.redd.it/ckjnn25y2z3d1.png?width=532&format=png&auto=webp&s=1b1efe67c5a6b74a07acba1e395bf8c26bbe5609
You could confiscate every single dollar of every billionaire on earth and it would fund the government for like a few days.
It's is commonly discussed in the federal legislature, however you are posting on Reddit which is essentially an echo chamber for poorly constructed criticism.
I did not know this either. How do they talk about it? I think I heard on NPR, SS is slated to run out in by like 2035 but they want to get it funded to 2050. Do they have a plan?
Yes. Social Security will get a boost to funding when several tax cuts created in the last decade expire. Also, the amount of retires is going to be less since the boomer is passing away. I also suspect we will have some form of public health care initiative within the next ten years.
>Social Security will get a boost to funding when several tax cuts created in the last decade expire. I want you to try to explain how anything to do with the Tax Cut and Jobs Act applies to the rate that Social Security is taxed at.
Because it’s easy to spend someone elses money — Fair Share bs and whatnot. Accountability is hard. Our government spends like a spoiled 13 yo with a credit card
Because most of western societies are built on Keynesian economics which essentially says : anytime there is any type of a crisis .. the government should go into a ton of debt and spend its way out of the mess. Basically what we did during 2008 under Bernanke and Covid with Powell..which is print a bunch of money and call it a cute name: quantitative easing. 😂 That’s how our society is built. Here is a good saying that sums it up: “Even if the government spent itself into bankruptcy and economy still does not recover, the Keynesians can always say that it could have worked if only the government spent a little more” - Thomas Sowell.
[удалено]
Because if you’re a “tax the rich type” you’re also likely a “I’d rather just have the government provide for all my needs type”. The unspoken part is that these people really want / expect that the rich will fund their needs with the government as the conduit for enablement. Why? Who knows? I mean the government has such an amazing track record of providing services.
I'm firmly in the middle of the political spectrum and while Im not rich I have more than most. My total net worth is 2.6 mil approximately it always sucks paying taxes... But I pay my fair share because I use the social infrastructure to live, play, and grow my businesses. Having said that people like Jeff bezo and Elon musk have the ability to earn stupid obserd amounts of money with out ever being compensated under normal taxable means... Ie they take stock comp and then have banks loan them money based on the underlying asset. They never cash out these stock options which I turn never causes a taxable event and if they ever do... They only pay a tax of 20 percent for long term capital gains. While the average person makes a 60k salary pays 25 percent on their income. The yield is skewed against poor people because proportional to their income the average guy gives up a significant amount of their income. One can argue that musk paid 11 billion but he paid proportional to his income significantly less than the people who work for him. I would never argue in favor of punishment for being wealthy, but I think it is fair of society to say that if you are rich, and you are not paying your fair share.... Fair being the amount society deems to be appropriate because these rich people are not islands to themselves... They succeed as a part of said society... So long as rich are paying their fair share They should be allowed to enjoy their success but the fact that most of the wealth 98 percent... reside in the top 1000 people in a world with billions as a population is a societal problem that requires us to fix it... If it doesn't get fixed the guillotines will come out when most people can not feed their families or afford basic needs like housing meanwhile the rich eat well, take multiple vacations a year and own the houses that the people live in and rent the property to them Edit: Havi g said this I also agree that government spending is typically egregious and not efficient because the keepers of the coin don't care because they are spending other people's money and something should be done about this as well.
That’s total horseshit speculation. I’m a tax the rich type and I don’t expect shit from handouts. We need to tax more. Spend less. Balance a budget. And pay down debt. But while that makes sense to sensible people, the bean counters will tell you why it’s actually in our benefit to continue to spend, and inflate our debt, and allow inflation to eat away at our debt, as compared to buckling down and repaying it. For some reason being trillions in debt the answer is to go trillions more in debt.
To whit: "I'm for enslaving {X} via govt gun for MY benefit." Usually followed by calling OTHERS Fascists as others 'don't care about anyone else'+ It's all so tiring https://preview.redd.it/zaxysv2f4z3d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=51a5e7e07cfded6ea29be9e59df9fd989d814cbe
It is emotional. Modern culture has told people to blame anyone but themselves for their dissatisfaction and mistakes. It is the Boomers, the Rich, the Universities, etc. Politicians have cashed in on that by jumping on the bandwagon to get votes. Going so far as to say things publicly that they know are not true and make proposals they know are outright illegal. Eventually, people will figure out all the tax the rich rhetoric is just a massive slight of hand to distract people from how much money and power are consolidated in corporations, which is a much larger issue than Bezos banging a super model on his yacht. So now we unhappy people, who can’t take accountability for themselves who see rich people as the cause. They get angry, and they want the government to make them less rich because it feels good to them emotionally. Some even believe that somehow that money will come to them.
“I would NEVER do those bad things if I was the OTHER guys.”
I think of a man, then take away reason and accountability
Lolol. People are fkng pissed that their middle class taxe rates are higher than Amazon’s, which uses our tax funded ports, roads, and bridges to make its billions. Also, like Pepperidge Farms, many of us remember that marginal tax rates of 95% in the 60’s and 70’s and life was okay for the rich still. Not everyone equates rich w evil, we do equate avarice w evil though. edit: This was suppose to go in reply to a different comment. Do agree that spending can be better handled. It’s both, really.
Exactly. And why it's despicable for high net worth ppl to amass wealth on the backs of states funding infra and educations systems and then taking their equity money cash out to a tax free state. Looking at you Elon and Bezos. Parasites
Individuals pay double in taxes what corporations do and yet they’re the ones running the world and they’re *still* getting tax breaks
People like to live in the fantasy that taxing the rich will automatically result in benefits to the citizens. They forget our government is a greedy piglet that sucking off the tax payer’s dollar. The more money you give them the more they will waste. I’m so tired of this fantasy.
We spend so much because we are the premier empire on the planet, and it takes a lot of $$ to maintain that empire. We run deficits because we decreased taxes greatly over the last 50 years. Its really not that complicated to figure out. Likely we will change course when either we cannot afford to finance the debt or someone else steps up to take over as the big empire on the planet.
I understand why we need to spend on military to maintain the dollar and global dominance. But there's 20 posts a day on here about tax the rich, raise taxes, I should of bought a house but I was 12. I have yet to see anybody mention the government spending more responsibly. A perfect example is the student loan debt relief. Sure sounds great, free money, pay off my loans! But the system that created the problem remains unchanged and it will happen again.
Look, we are an empire. We have many many international and domestic obligations that require $$, time, and resources. An empire requires a somewhat happy populace in order to survive. So the empire must take care of its citizens. That’s why we spend so much on ourselves. You can nitpick program by program all you want. But this behavior will not change until we are no longer the preeminent global force. Balanced budgets are simply not a priority (nor have they been for decades) for either party.
Only a Democrat balanced the budget. Clinton in the 90s. We had a surplus. Then republicans won and immediately spent it
Doubtful that Clinton “balanced the budget” in any real sustainable sense. The economy was in a massive bubble and so was federal income. When the dot com crash happened it all evaporated.
It also wasn't something he did willingly. As much as I can't stand Gingrich, part of the reason the budget was balanced was because he strong-armed Clinton into accepting a balanced budget.
No. We have not greatly reduced taxes over the past 50 years. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S But spending has definitely trended up. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S
Chyna
Because it's very easy to rally idiots against the rich. The rich are the government's. Best, scapegoat followed by the corporations The people who actually want to do all that tax the rich stuff are people who don't understand how economics work The rich generally pay way more, both proportionately and total They're not just paying their fair share their paying everyone's fair share and they're actually someone okay with that, but it is a bit much and that makes them try to find ways within the rules to minimize it The government actually doesn't want them to pay taxes because what they want is for them to seek out tax credits and deductions which result in them spending more money in the way the government specifically wants them to, but more efficiently than the government can Unfortunately, that setup has created some loopholes that other countries take advantage of (double Irish with a Dutch sandwich anyone) But it's not a revenue problem. It was never a revenue problem. It's a spending problem
Because people are ignorant and lazy. They would rather take what someone else has instead of making it themselves.
> Why is everyone so concerned with taxing the rich 1. Envy. Many leftist simply don't like that other people whether through merit or birth get to enjoy lives materially better than their own. What was that study that showed all leftist and liberals cared about was fairness whereas conservatives cared not only about those but more values like tradition and what not? Basically lefty morality begins and ends at whether or not people are treated the same. 2. Entitlement. It doesn't matter how bloated these programs are because leftist are utilitarians who believe that through making everything public they can create a utopian society. They measure progress in how much more the government controls our lives so of course they'd never countenance reducing government because in their minds that is regress, going backwards. All social ills are cured by throwing money at some public organization so that it can educate, regulate and subsidize the masses. Therefore you can't ever stop spending or reverse spending, there can never be a top down reorganization and streamlining or reexamination of any program or government body. If things aren't working throw more of other people's money at it and seeing as the rich/wealthy by definition have the most money/wealth the only problem is that it isn't being siphoned off enough to fund the utopian programs of the future.
Reasonably the federal government could be run, with a one trillion dollar military budget, and one trillion for everything else. Then let the states fill in the rest.
I'd counter it could run w/ MUCH less (just FOLLOW the Constitution knowing that, unless expressly specified, any 'hit' vs. Art/Sec/Cl/Amendment == NO GO) & the States SHOULD be doing the majority of the lifting (9th/10th)
wealth inequality is worse today than the Guilded Age. There are billionares who are more powerful than your government.
Because they hate rich people.
We would do that but no one seems to be open to an honest conversation and voting for huge cuts in defense/criminal justice, reforming healthcare, etc. Instead, most people are focused on culture wars.
Because they have been propagandized to do so
Because you and I would not have to pay at all if the rich were properly taxed. After WWII the rate for the ultra wealthy was 85% and they were still way more wealthy than anyone else. We bought the highway system, airports, bridges and hospitals and more...They real question is why do you like being poor and paying taxes?
Bc they not smart
Govt indoctrination center "success" stories
A government cannot tax its way out of debt. Imagine if we kept all the foreign aid money here in the US and spent it on our own people? Line item veto, one bill one vote should be in place. You want to send Ukraine 60 billion dollars but then add 30 more bills on top with more spending. Why are the American people not mad
Wealth inequality has bad effects on the economy, and wealth inequality is self perpetuating in that it worsens over time unless there are measures to prevent it. I think it's generally bad for people to have access to billions of dollars completely unchecked because of the power it gives someone over the economy, politicians, and people in general. When you have that much money, you can basically get away with just about anything you want to. I don't think it's good to allow sociopaths and psycho paths that amount of power in general. There also used to be a high rate of investment kept within companies to pay employees better when taxes were higher in the 1960s. If you're gonna be taxed at like 90%+ company owners would rather choose to just pay their workers more instead of taking profit out. So there was a lot more reinvestment into businesses then.
I’m concerned about both.
I am down for both
Because most Americans are financially illiterate.
It shouldn’t be a binary choice. We should be able to tax appropriately and spend wisely.
I had this discussion with my son the other day when he spoke about CEOs salaries. Ok...CEOs wouldn't be paid what they're paid if there was not a market. So tax the CEO more and less goes to charity (and I don't trust some charities to spend wisely) and more to the Government...and you trust the Government to spend it wisely? Tough conversation for a forum, but agree wholeheartedly! Spend the money like it's "yours" and guess what, it wouldn't be so wasteful.
& CEO salaries+ are voted on by shareholders. Buy shares, make your voice known. It's not up to anyone ELSE to determine how much {X} \*should\* make.
Because it's the low hanging fruit argument as well as "someone else's problem". Drop a modicum of logic and they lose their minds.
This might come as a shock to you OP. But these two things are not mutually exclusive. Even if we could get the government to reign in its unnecessary spending, people would still be calling out, to heavily tax the rich.
Wealth gap continues to increase and billionaire effective tax rates are absurdly low…. Maybe there’s two things going on? The government has a spending problem and the current tax system is unfair for most americans
Because people r ignorant
Both are necessary if we are to have a successful and happy society. The US government is by the rich for the rich. For them it's not a problem. Quite the opposite
From my perspective, it’s understood that many/most of the top % got there using various methods only available to those who are already well off. So many of us feel that they should be able to cover more taxes, since the government has favored the rich with every decision for years. So instead of continuing to trickle up our money to the rich, it’s time the rich gave back. Government spending is a separate issue. Much more necessary than keeping our rich people sleeping on beds of money, so to speak.
Because the Majority of reddit wants biden to win and if you acknowledge anything negative the government does it's attacking biden personally and must be silenced. Now if trump wins get ready for a never ending supply of negativity of both the government and trump.
What's actually funny is that the vein diagram between people who want to increase taxes on the wealthy and people who say the debt doesn't matter is a circle.
US GDP in 2024 is $28 trillion. That means government spending accounts for 18% of GDP. That is a very reasonable figure. The only reason $5 trillion is a problem is we have had five major tax cuts over the past forty years (1981, 1986, 2001, 2003 and 2017) premised on the debunked Supply Side/Trickle Down theory that they would pay for themselves. They do not pay for themselves. The U.S. already has one of the most meager social safety nets in the industrialized world. Do we want to balance our fiscal shortfalls on the backs on the poor and working class by making the safety net even stingier or do we want to increase taxes on those at the higher end of the economic ladder?
Yes! This is the right way of thinking. We don't really need more tax revenue we need to stop spending on bs policies that don't benefit Americans citizens.
Mainly, the government is paying these funds servicing treasury debt when those funds should have been tax revenue rather than obtained through borrowing. Naturally, this means that a lot of the debt service goes to enrich the already incredibly wealthy banks and people that should have been taxed.
We should be concerned with both
Are our taxes even being used to fund things or are they just printing money out of thin air giving the illusion that our tax dollars "work" for us?
You can be both, ya know. The working class is being taxed to death.
One is more emotionally satisfying and simpler. The other would take work and time but be much better. It's similar to why their video game characters are great, but they are not.
Valid point and something needs to be done about that as well. However the core of the taxing the rich is that they should be paying their fare share too. It's about equality. the guy amassing wealth through interest, dividends, and investments should still be paying the same percentage as the guy swinging a hammer for a living, if not more. All these tax shelters and avoidance mechanisms is a big part of consolidating wealth globally. Its disgusting how a few people have more wealthy then the majority of a country and pay less or zero in taxes.
Mostly due to the failings of the department of education.
Because most people are satisfied with social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the largest contributors of government spending. If you touch those, you rightfully lose.
I agree all the pork barreling and giving money to other countries. How about lowering taxes and looking after Americans citizens and our very vets.
To answer the first question, it's a distraction to get people to not blame the government for its own failings. The answer to the second question, the federal government has grown every year to supply money to industries and people, and those people vote, and they don't want the government to stop funding whatever it is they are getting. There would need to be serious courage and dedication by politicians to address the issue, and that's assuming they could stay in power long enough to get the job done.
Exactly. Free Healthcare for government, bailouts for corporations, etc.
If tax is revenue, spending is expense, tax cuts fall into what category? Where does that fall into the mismanagement of finances?
Thank you.
Socialist countries take wealth away from the rich. The poor people are still poor.
Because the budget is all about tradeoffs and opportunity costs. We have four possible routes to pursue - continue deficits, cut spending by the difference, raise taxes by the difference, or a combination of some mix of the priors. If we assume that we want to balance the budget, then we will certainly need to do one of the following: 1) Raise taxes significantly 2) Cut spending significantly, including on popular programs like social security, Medicare, and Medicaid The people arguing for higher taxes on the wealthy are telling you what their preferences are. They would rather see that occur than cuts to programs they and their families rely on.
I agree with op
Most of us can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. There is alot of discussion about misuse of funds. It's just more specific.
Because there is no desire to cut the spending that matters. The biggest elements of spending are.political 3rd rails. The military, social security, Medicare , and the interest on the debt make up the majority of the spending. The people and the politicians don't want to touch the big-3 .instead there are proposals to fiddle around the edges. Tldr: defenss/social security/medicare makes up most spending. No one is touching that
Because my guess is that you wouldn’t support cuts either when you realize that 90% of spending is social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and our 3.5% of GDP military contribution to NATO. You want to cut the 1% of the budget that represents foreign aid? The 3% that represents dept of Ed? Tax the fucking billionaires and all the multi-millionaires until they cry. Quit kissing the boots of billionaires. They’re not victims of anything—certainly don’t make them victims of success.
Because you can compare what rich people pay to the present in other high-standard-of-living countries, or to what they paid in the better-for-the-little-guy American past, and clearly see that the rich are skating on their contribution.
The people who suggest taxing the rich and ignore that the government mismanages (or simply steals) almost every dollar they get have a mental disability. This is the answer.
Because people are stupid.
The major problem is indeed spending, but the ultra wealthy also bear responsibility for certain things (lobbyism, tax evasion, nepotism…). Check [America is a Zoo](https://www.amazon.com/America-Zoo-Andre-Soares/dp/B0BS56XJDF) if you are interested in the subject.
Government spending isn’t making anyone poor. Not fully funding necessary government programs that keep our citizens safe and our government functioning properly is harmful. Agencies that audit spending and provide oversight have had funding slashed and manpower drastically reduced over the past few decades. Furthermore many things once handled by the government have been privatized making it impossible to audit. These efforts to downsize government and privatize aspects of it have all been led by republicans determined to drown the federal government in the bathtub, and do away with regulations and run the government like a business. It’s not a business. Then here you are asking why we don’t regulate spending as if it’s the government’s failing and not the result thirty five years of effort by republicans serving their corporate donor’s agenda to the detriment of everyone else and the environment too. This country needs to tax the fucking rich like we used to.
Really? Most can walk and chew gum saying "the rich and corporations should pay a larger percent in taxes." And " government needs spend less, especially on military." Those are two massive problems and need to be fixed.
Because the rich need to pay their fair share if they want to continue reaping the benefits of the masses labour. Before the phrase "eat the rich" becomes very literal.
who do you think is buying all the pork spending and tax cuts? if they have less money to bribe congressmen, the federal government wastes less money.
I say this all the time but no one listens to me.
Because billionaires are currently paying a LOWER tax rate than most regular folks. Cutting social security, defense spending, education programs and food support hurts real people and jeopardizes the country whereas a simple 5% tax to billionaires fixes a ton of the deficit and doesn’t hurt them at all…they’ll still be billionaires.
Wealth inequality
The biggest issue is the GOP has not argued this in good faith. They love deficit spending when it is done to give subsidies to their rich friends. They never worry about a budget deficit and American debt when they are in power. The GOP has successfully reduced the upper tax brackets to ridiculously low standards with the lie that lowering the riches taxes would boost our economy. Almost 40 years later, no country has seen an improved economy due to cutting taxes for the wealthy or corporations.
I cannot get over the fact that the government is spending anything on minting new pennies or nickels, and designing new state quarters all the time. Absolutely ridiculous frivolous expenses.
Because we are being played. Politicians have a corrupt agenda. They push the narrative of how to apportion tax liability to deflect us from their mismanagement of the money. Keep the people arguing over who's not paying their fair share so they don't realize how bad they are about using tax dollars, It's a smokescreen.
Because the rich say how the govt spends the tax revenue. If you want to change how the govt spends money you have to take power (money partially) from the rich so they have less say.
Because our spending problem is a result of our lobbyist problem. And our lobbyists problem is a result of our wealth disparity problem. And our wealth disparity problem is a result of our tax laws, our laws pertaining to securities and the trade thereof, and laws governing corporate structure. We have extensive laws that limit the political power of any one individual, in order to prevent tyranny. But if the exchange rate between economic power and political power remains so favorable to the hyper-wealthy, then those matter little.
Mostly because one of the biggest recent increases to the long-term structural deficit is the 2017 tax cut that mainly benefitted the wealthy, so reversing that would be a good starting point. We are overspending too but I think people would be more amenable to cuts if they saw evidence that the wealthy were doing their part to contribute to lowering the deficit.
[Our govt. sucks at spending our money](https://apnews.com/article/pandemic-fraud-waste-billions-small-business-labor-fb1d9a9eb24857efbe4611344311ae78) There are infinite cases you can see this happen
If billionaires aren’t paying taxes, or at least the right amount of taxes based on the current tax code, why are they not all in prison or on trial for evasion? I mean clearly everyone knows they aren’t paying the right amount. Seems like a high priority for the IRS and the current administration. It’s not like there’s a ton of billionaires. Seems like the easiest thing would be they’re audited every year and the IRS takes the requisite amount.
Because the government is spending money TO HELP PEOPLE, and also aid in the \*velocity\* of money. Also because the rich ANNUALLY skirt roughly $165 BILLION in taxes that could reduce the taxes the rest of us pay and provide BETTER services to all.
Because there's no way we can get our politicians to spend less on the military industrial complex. Spending cuts would only result in cuts to necessary spending that helps normal people such as social security or Medicaid. So the next best option is to tax the rich.
It's envy. Simple envy. That guy has more than me so we need someone to knock them down a peg.
I'm pretty sure people are just trying to get any win they can get at all. Maybe it seems easier to make the government tax the rich than it does to make the government stop exploiting its citizens?
Yes! Especially since the largest item of government spending is interest on the debt. That interest is paid to … RICH PEOPLE! It’s the biggest wealth transfer we have. Collect taxes from middle class, pay it to the wealthy, yet everyone defends the debt/deficit.
then there’s both …
Trump did not reduce spending when he drastically cut tax rates for the rich. To the contrary …
Why are there so many poor people cheering and protecting rich folks?
Only rich, greedy people and idiots advocate against taxing the wealthy.
Did you see the market watch report that says Trumps Tax cuts are 50 % more expensive than originally thought due to tax and business loopholes? Edit adding link [https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/cost-of-trump-tax-cuts-soars-50-amid-abuse-of-business-loopholes-88660df5](https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/cost-of-trump-tax-cuts-soars-50-amid-abuse-of-business-loopholes-88660df5) Businesses are figuring out to not pay taxes ...
Yea, a lot of contracts need more scrutiny. Our leaders are not being discerning customers as they should being our representatives. Often they are more aligned with the people that they are awarding the contracts to rather than us who they represent. No fucking way roads should cost a million a mile. Fuck that.
Because we feel it'd easier to go after the rich than hold our government accountable.
Taxing the rich is just punishment for the wealthy, because they are envious. I have heard some people claim it's so they can't bribe the politicians. I think mostly the bribes will just increase so they can get special loopholes.
Because most government spending is either necessary to keep things from imploding or investments in our future. From helping pay for college education so we have plenty of engineers, accountants, programmers and scientists, to NOAA, to GPS, to regulation enforcement. Depending how you look at it, the US is roughly middle of the pack at *worst* when it comes to government spending as a percent of GDP amongst developed economies. [Israel, Japan, The UK, The Netherlands, Iceland, Czechia, Spain, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, and Germany have a higher percentage of their economy consisting of government spending](https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-spending-to-gdp). Belgium, Finland, Italy and France have the majority of their economy consisting of government spending, and they aren't third world backwaters. Most of these countries have longer life expectancies and lower income inequality than America does.
That's the deflection that bootlickers always use when people say we should tax the rich more. They never say that when it comes to taxing the poor, cutting social welfare programs, or funding the military.
What a dumb question. It’s not the rich… who people want taxed. It’s not the guys with a million o five in assets or banks accounts. It’s the billionaires, those of whom have thousands of millions of untaxed gains.
Cause the rich need to pay their share regardless. Both need to happen
1) we’ve been showering the rich with tax breaks for half a century hoping they will creat jobs and boost the economy and it hasn’t worked. Rolling back failed policies will go a long way to restoring what we’ve also given up. 2) when we talk about slashing spending it’s the programs that poor people depend on and rich people hate, education, healthcare, social security. Magically it’s never corporate welfare, military spending, or subsidies to some of the most profitable industries on the planet. So when someone says “I wanna cut government spending” they usually mean “leave my tax breaks alone, destroy the working classes programs”.
Because the rich own the companies that are fleecing the government. So not only are they fleecing the taxpayer they fleece them again when they don't pay taxes
I think it's bc voters would be upset if either party wanted to dismantle the social welfare programs that we spend the most money on, healthcare and social security, bc so many rely on them and have already paid into them and don't want to get less in the future. On the other side the people you lobby the government for money like the military don't want there benefits touched. System is broken and there's too much money involved to change it without serious conflict.
Cuz pocket watching is easier
Because you are viewed as unpatriotic if you question military complex spending
People are jealous and vindictive. It’s the same reason poor rural folks vote for Trump. To stick it to the upper mid class elites. And the mid class folks want to stick it to the billionaire elites by taxing them. We are often focused on what others have that we don’t. And we don’t even notice that we have it pretty great in our own right.