The budget and the debt are the two things I really care about and this administration has handled it horribly. The 25 years have all been bad, but at some point someone had to do something about it before it spirals out of control, right? It seems like we’re at the tipping point.
> He is doing something about it, he's going to ensure inflation makes the debt really tiny. At least he's been pretty vocal about that.
That's 1/10nth of the story. The rest is that inflation is form of paying back the debt by way of regressive tax imposed on the poor with interest delivered to the rich.
As a real estate person, all he understands is debt based financing. It's also why he wants low interest rates, it's better for his forged accounting books.
ETTD is a thing for a reason, I'm trying to be optimistic that the country is an exception to this rule.
> Everyone is too ignorant about the world outside the U.S. to look at what middle class taxes look like in places like Sweden or France that offer all the social services they want here.
Maybe instead of looking at "the world outside the U.S." you could look into fundamental economics? As I explained above, repayment by inflation is a regressive tax imposed on the middle and below, with interest paid to the rich. This is only cosmetically different from what Sweden and France are doing.
If people can’t understand basic facts like how much money there is to be saved or taxed in various places they certainly can’t understand what you’re saying.
The problem isn’t the policy, it’s that taxing billionaires is portrayed as the main of a primary solution to pay for new spending. Just like Trump points to cutting waste and fraud as the way to balance the budget or pay for tax cuts. It’s pointing to a relatively small source of potential revenue to justify large increases in spending.
These are strategies for people who get confused about the differences between billions and trillions. For example, 74% of people who support medicare for all think it could be paid for entirely by taxing billionaires: https://echeloninsights.com/hubfs/_Media%20for%20Insights%20.... That’s off by an order of magnitude
We have to raise taxes $2 trillion in the first year to balance the budget, even with no new spending. Realistically, we need to raise taxes $3-4 trillion to balance the budget and pay for universal healthcare and childcare. Nobody is talking about how to do that. Ironically, Trump’s tariffs have raised triple the estimated annual tax revenue of AOC’s 70% marginal tax rate proposal from 2019, and about as much as Warren’s wealth tax proposal would have in the first year.
Weird how it seemed to work out okay, without only creating inflation from the 1930s-1980s right up until Ronald Reagan and the Republicans decided it couldn't possibly work anymore. We can all see how well that switch has gone; or at least most of us can.
Billionaires didn't pay any more taxes between 1930s and 1980s than they do now. Moreover, during Reagan presidency, total government tax revenues as percentage of GDP were *higher* than between 1930 and 1980.
You are simply illustrating rayiner's point: you don't understand the financial side of running the government, you have no knowledge of actual figures, neither current nor historical, but believe that taxing rich guys even more will solve all the problems we have.
I didn't say it would solve all the problems, I said it would move the needle.
I guess you're right, I don't understand. We mustn't tax the wealthiest people, and no amount of actual figures is going to convince people like you folks otherwise, not when there are billionaires to glaze.
I've been alive for quite a while now, and my actual _lived experience_ is republicans have cut taxes on the wealthy every time they've been in power for decades and decades, but sure keep trying to convince us that "billionaires are paying more taxes than ever!" and that ackshually it's the damn poors who aren't being taxed enough!
The U.S. has never had wealth taxes. We had high marginal rates. But as noted in the sibling comment it didn’t actually raise more money.
If you wanted to go to high marginal rates on income, that’s the AOC 70% top margin rate proposal I mentioned above. Even optimistic estimates are that it would raise like $30-70 billion a year. We need to raise taxes by 30-50 times as much just to close the budget deficit.
Sounds like 70 billion a year (by your optimistic estimates) towards narrowing the deficit, that ain't nothing!
And what _I_ actually want to do is tax all the individual billionaires out of existence and also have a high marginal rate on income, because why not both?
>American politics runs on promising voters free stuff without higher taxes
I would phrase it differently: the winners of democratic elections tend to win by promising voters free stuff, and even the US is not completely immune to this tendency.
During the first 150 years of democratic elections in the US, the voters got approximately zero free stuff. E.g., when the Dust Bowl made 100s of 1000s of families completely destitute, they received no substantial assistance from (state or Federal) governments: the free stuff started to be delivered a couple of years after the start of the Dust Bowl when FDR took office.
BTW the US economy was already 3 times the size of the next largest economy (the UK) at the start of the Dust Bowl.
> the free stuff started to be delivered a couple of years after that when FDR took office (and many howled in protest).
Yes, and it got baked into the system because Catholic immigrants voted as a bloc for democrats for the better part of a century (e.g. for JFK by 80% in an election he won by 0.17%).
Our current massive peacetime deficits dates back to Reagan’s compromise to win over Catholics and white ethnics (those were the “Reagan democrats”). He pivoted to social conservatism and anti-communism, which could unify catholics, evangelical whites, and much of the old GOP. But he could never push meaningful spending cuts because it would blow up the coalition.
Yeah, Trump keeps talking about how Biden gave Ukraine 100s of billions which is bullshit but has no problem spending 1 Trillion on fighting Iran. Currently on the very conservative side of things the War in Iran has cost every American at a minimum 2k on the low end. The guy just knows how to dig a hole and there is no bottom for the loser. The next administration will be doing triage for an entire 4 years trying to save the country after this sob and the sobs in his administration.
This is what happens every single time a conservative administration is in charge. Literally. Every. Single. Time. Conservatives fuck up the deficit giving the rich tax cuts and liberals come in and patch things back together again. There is something deeply wrong with conservative voters on many aspects.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 50.1 ms ] threadThat's 1/10nth of the story. The rest is that inflation is form of paying back the debt by way of regressive tax imposed on the poor with interest delivered to the rich.
ETTD is a thing for a reason, I'm trying to be optimistic that the country is an exception to this rule.
Maybe instead of looking at "the world outside the U.S." you could look into fundamental economics? As I explained above, repayment by inflation is a regressive tax imposed on the middle and below, with interest paid to the rich. This is only cosmetically different from what Sweden and France are doing.
These are strategies for people who get confused about the differences between billions and trillions. For example, 74% of people who support medicare for all think it could be paid for entirely by taxing billionaires: https://echeloninsights.com/hubfs/_Media%20for%20Insights%20.... That’s off by an order of magnitude
We have to raise taxes $2 trillion in the first year to balance the budget, even with no new spending. Realistically, we need to raise taxes $3-4 trillion to balance the budget and pay for universal healthcare and childcare. Nobody is talking about how to do that. Ironically, Trump’s tariffs have raised triple the estimated annual tax revenue of AOC’s 70% marginal tax rate proposal from 2019, and about as much as Warren’s wealth tax proposal would have in the first year.
You are simply illustrating rayiner's point: you don't understand the financial side of running the government, you have no knowledge of actual figures, neither current nor historical, but believe that taxing rich guys even more will solve all the problems we have.
I guess you're right, I don't understand. We mustn't tax the wealthiest people, and no amount of actual figures is going to convince people like you folks otherwise, not when there are billionaires to glaze.
I've been alive for quite a while now, and my actual _lived experience_ is republicans have cut taxes on the wealthy every time they've been in power for decades and decades, but sure keep trying to convince us that "billionaires are paying more taxes than ever!" and that ackshually it's the damn poors who aren't being taxed enough!
If you wanted to go to high marginal rates on income, that’s the AOC 70% top margin rate proposal I mentioned above. Even optimistic estimates are that it would raise like $30-70 billion a year. We need to raise taxes by 30-50 times as much just to close the budget deficit.
And what _I_ actually want to do is tax all the individual billionaires out of existence and also have a high marginal rate on income, because why not both?
I would phrase it differently: the winners of democratic elections tend to win by promising voters free stuff, and even the US is not completely immune to this tendency.
During the first 150 years of democratic elections in the US, the voters got approximately zero free stuff. E.g., when the Dust Bowl made 100s of 1000s of families completely destitute, they received no substantial assistance from (state or Federal) governments: the free stuff started to be delivered a couple of years after the start of the Dust Bowl when FDR took office.
BTW the US economy was already 3 times the size of the next largest economy (the UK) at the start of the Dust Bowl.
Yes, and it got baked into the system because Catholic immigrants voted as a bloc for democrats for the better part of a century (e.g. for JFK by 80% in an election he won by 0.17%).
Our current massive peacetime deficits dates back to Reagan’s compromise to win over Catholics and white ethnics (those were the “Reagan democrats”). He pivoted to social conservatism and anti-communism, which could unify catholics, evangelical whites, and much of the old GOP. But he could never push meaningful spending cuts because it would blow up the coalition.