These welfare systems haven't been in place very long in the grand scheme of things. Several implemented well within living memory. It was never a sure thing a country could maintain them forever. They were based on notions of infinite population growth, long changed life expectancies and relatively unsophisticated, inexpensive and unadvanced medical treatments. Now we have a gone from 6 to 1 workers taxes supporting a retiree to 3 to 1 and it's only getting worse. The birth rate has collapsed. We have time, resource and human capital intensive medical treatments which are a massive expense which prolongs lives. We have people living far longer than they used to. These systems are not sustainable. They are going to collapse. That's when you will see huge amounts of real human suffering. Wake up and smell the coffee you dolt.
The United States ranked 32nd¹ out of 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio in 2023. In 2023, the United States had a tax-to-GDP ratio of 25.2% compared with the OECD average of 33.9%. We were at 28% in 2000. So, seems like going back to 28% would cut about $1T of the deficit and still put us well below most developed countries. Cut $1T in spending and you're pretty close to balanced (since higher taxes and lower spending would negatively impact GDP). We can afford to run some deficits and obviously interest rates would drop with less deficits (which would benefit GDP). https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oe...revenues/revenue-statistics-united-states.pdf
Where are you going to cut $1 trillion dollars in spending? It would be immensely politically difficult and unpopular to cut that much spending.
I'm open to cutting entitlements and increasing taxes. Which entitlements are you open to cutting and to what extent? Remember we have a nearly $2 trillion dollar deficit. So, you're going to need some pretty dramatic cuts or some pretty dramatic tax increases.
Raising taxes would be unpopular too. Cutting spending would be painful - you probably are looking at an almost all of the above type approach since that is about 15% of the 2024 budget (never mind discretionary vs non, or that you might not need $2T of combined taxes/spending to get rates lowered/fiscal stability). And, yeah maybe the math of $1T of tax/$1T of spending is not feasible, but.... The real issue is that these things don't even make it to the discussion table. My hunch is, people would see tax hikes or spending cuts more palatable if they knew that the pain was being borne by the entire country. Instead we have tax cuts that will primarily benefit certain brackets and spending cuts that will primarily impact another group of brackets.
Yea, I think you're correct in stating such spending cuts/tax increases are politically untenable. Which means, ultimately, this whole thing is going to collapse and people will suffer terribly for it. Just absolutely reckless fiscal policy but that's what happens when politicians are only thinking about 2/4/6 year political cycles and spending cuts receive an avalanche of media criticism. The collapse will be someone elses problem. But the musical chairs will stop on someone.
First you cut out inefficiencies(not what DOGE is doing cause they are trash). Then you reform things(like I said before) with lower drug prices and lifting the payroll tax cap, taxing higher earners. Then you you cut miliatary spending AND THEN you can focusing on cutting from social programs but in a way thats human and hurts as little as possible. The way you talk is just all problems and no solutions. And your MAGA cuck politicians arent solving your problems either.
Tax cuts are always going to benefit high earners, because they are the ones that pay all the taxes. Benefit cuts are always going to hurt the low earners because they are the ones that receive all the benefits. The government is now primarily a wealth transfer system that is in place to counteract capitalism. Money is taken from the people the top half and given to the bottom half (and more each way the further you are from the median). About half of all Americans are paying net zero or less in taxes. You can view all of this as a good thing or a bad thing, but this is the reality. That's why it always sounds so silly to me when people say that the rich should pay their fair share. Who are the rich and what is their fair share? How much of the tax burden should say the top 10% of earners carry? 100%, 90%, 80%, 75%?
To all those people who voted for Trump to get no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no taxes on social security..... The billionaires will get their tax cuts though. No surprise there
To complain about the miniscule payroll tax when the income tax was exempted is asinine. Any server that works full time hours will save much more from zero income tax on tips than they would from zero payroll tax. Federal payroll taxes are 7.65% for the employee. Income tax on income under $11,600 is 10%. No income tax on tips is a 43% tax break on the first $10k they earn. Income tax on $11,601 to $47,150 is 12%. No income tax on tips is a 61% tax break on that income. Income tax on $47,151 to $100,525 is 22% on that income. No income tax on tips is a 74% tax break on that income. I don't agree with giving special treatment to tips and overtime and social security. It encourages fraud (classifying more income as tips or overtime than is true). It makes the income tax even more progressive (it is already too progressive). It favors some low-income workers over others (servers at sit down restaurants over fast food workers, for example). It focuses tax relief on the people that pay less than zero in net taxes. This should be a Democrats dream tax cut, but they are grandstanding as though it somehow is antithetical to their communist ideology. Nothing could be further from the truth. These cuts are very left leaning. The people who are talking about them as though they are not a pander to the lower class are stupid, ignorant, or lying.
It doesn't apply to all tips, so the savings are limited, but since I also think it's a stupid tax break I don't really care to criticize the broken promise, but rather the stupid policy both candidates promised. Same for no tax on overtime.
I'm not complaining about any of that. It's the ones who believe anything he promises that are stupid. They will still end up paying more for everything in the long run under Trump, whether from tariffs, getting canned, losing civil rights, being exposed to more danger from toxins or chemicals, discrimination in the workplace, working in more unsafe conditions, paying more for homes, cars, and necessities, being put at more risk and losing more assistance when hurricanes, floods, and disasters strike, or losing healthcare. The black and brown skinned folks that voted for that liar and thought their life was going to get better under Trump are getting a big wakeup call now though, now that we're reverting back to the days of old. I knew that lying con only wanted to better things for himself. He's made a few billion already in less than 5 months using his influence and power to collect big bribes into his family businesses and real estate ventures for favors, and he's just getting started on his criminal grift.
I would not be opposed to paying more in taxes if New York did not already have their hand in my pocket with the state and county taxes.
dizzying height of willful ignorance !. ~40% of income tax collected by the IRS are from the top 1% earners; that means ~60% of income tax paid are collected from the bottom 99% i wish that you would stop parroting convenient lies !
Faced with the dilemma of choosing (a) suffering now caused by lack of medical care for the poor and destitute senior citizens versus (b) suffering later in the form of financial insolvency, opportunistic privations by foreign actors, and general chaos and unrest (which will probably include a lack of medical care for the poor and destitute senior citizens) later, I'd pick the latter. The near term suffering is more predictable and certain and should be avoided. The second scenario is more prospective and uncertain. The future is hard to predict and there may be solutions we come to later that we can't even dream of right now. I won't elect immediate suffering to avoid a future risk of suffering. If we can take steps now to start to address anticipated future problems without causing massive suffering, we should do that, but don't sacrifice until the moment for it actually comes. (My attitude about climate change is the same -- take steps to address problems now (and try to make it in-the-money by leveraging markets), but don't hurt people's lives now to prospectively save some later with efforts like banning all oil drilling.) And secondly, if we're going to be sincere as a society in tackling this problem, that sincerity should be reflected in policy. If we look at all the revenues and expenses of the country (not just the government, but the whole country) and see we need to tighten our belts a bit, you start with cutting the most frivolous expenses first before addressing the more critical ones. Though I hate household budget comparisons, for an example you would cancel your Hulu subscription before selling your car even though the savings on the Hulu subscription are immaterial. And the first place I'd go is that we don't need excessive wealth hoarding by billionaires. Give that up first. It's not big enough to move the needle, but it reflects our commitment to solving the problem. It is the nation's Hulu account. Why should the poor consent to suffer before the rich consent to-- well, not suffer, but to profit less? If that's the proposition -- that the poor suffer but the rich do not -- well, let's just drive this thing off the cliff and see what happens.
Eisenhower had an 87% corporate tax rate and over 70% on the rich, we built the largest economy in the world with the greatest middle class. Be like Ike ! DD
You could confiscate every single dollar the billionaires of this country have and fund the government for 1 single year. Also, you would then have destroyed that tax base for all the years moving forward. Everyone knows taxing wealth is very difficult. Many countries have tried. I'm not saying we shouldn't look for better ways to tax the wealthy but nobody has been successful at it. Taxing income is unfortunately much more straightforward apparently. 75% of the federal budgets is some form of entitlement or debt service. Then you have defense. Then you have discretionary spending with individual departments or programs making up a small percentage of the budget. How much Hulu do we have to cut? Even if you cut the defense budget ENTIRELY you would still have a $1 trillion dollar deficit. So you can pay lip service to finding the "Hulus" of the government and make yourself sound like you're some great person because you "don't want to hurt the poor/old/vulnerable" but it's disingenuous. Those people will suffer and suffer terribly when this system collapses in on itself. It's not "speculative." The math is certain.
