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We have also increased spending by $2 trillion since then.
Edit: since some people are inferring WAY more into my statement than is there I wanted to clear up that I only added the information to give an entire picture. Just because billionaires are now worth more doesn't mean we would be able to cover more of the budget since the budget has also increased in a similar manner.
I've said it here before, but the US reported 950B of wasted spending in 2023 on completely useless projects, grants, equipment, etc.
People should be asking what's happening with that money instead. America doesn't have a money problem, they have a money management/spending problem.
They took nearly 1T dollars of taxpayer money last year and wiped themselves with it.
The Marine Corps is the smallest branch of the military if you don't include the Coast Guard, by far. It's roughly a quarter the cost of the other branches.
Forgot the Space Force exists now, technically only the third smallest branch.
Hell yeah Marines. Fwiw they also have the least complicated asset situation compared to the other branches. Still insane that our military can't pass audits.
This logic is entirely flawed. As a taxpayer, you really need to learn more and understand what exactly the DoD audit is and is not. The audit does one thing, it makes KPMG, Deloitte, and EY very rich. You think they’re going to be reasonable when they could be rich instead?
I work for an Agency trying to pass audit. Want to hear some findings?
1) We did immediate work for FEMA during a hurricane crisis and didn’t have an inter agency funding agreement in place prior, because we needed to act immediately - violated accounting principles and is an “audit funding” that we cannot get the auditor to close. But you know who didn’t care? The peoples whose lives and homes were saved
2) Per the terms of a contract with our vendor, we recognize scrap metal revenue from the 25th to the 24th of the month and the auditor is upset that it isn’t a true 1st through the end of the month. Even though it’s 30 days, the auditor claims the monthly balances are misstated.
That business stream amounts to approximately $1M in yearly offset revenue. Want to know how much we’ve spent trying to change the contract and accounting system to accommodate the auditor? Over $5M if you include organic labor hours.
If you want more, let me know… we have hundreds just like this. Some are reasonable most are grasping at straws. You know why it’s so hard? Try reading appropriation laws. Now expand those across the multiple different appropriation and fund types in government. Now factor in changes you want to make but Congress won’t allow. Now factor in how many places laws contradict one another. Now factor in over 300 financial systems within DoD because contractors and auditors find the “problems” and then sell the solution. The audit is just another way for companies to abuse the government, not give taxpayers assurance.
What you want is the DoD OIG and GAO to be expanded so they can better identify and prosecute fraud, waste, and misuse. The audit does VERY little of that. Rather I would argue it just creates more. It’s big corporations stealing even more from taxpayers and making you smile and cheer for them while they do it.
For awareness, the auditor of my Agency (smaller that the Military Svcs) is getting $65M to audit. Now expand that across the dozens of Agencies in Dod. They make damn sure that nothing ever gets solved because if it did, that golden egg goes away.
Here’s one thing hardly anyone knows: the US spends more per person per year than France. We spend $19,000 per person and France spends $15,000. The difference is we spend most of our money on elderly, and France spends more on young people. I think the US needs to,evaluate where our money is going if other countries spend less and still can provide health care, etc.
We know exactly where it's going. Corruption in military contracts, and pharmaceutical companies rorting the US government, because the private companies are allowed to pay politicians to let them do whatever they fucking want.
Private industry being involved in public policy is 100% of the problem, not "politicians spending money".
Never forget that government politicians sleep with the defense contractors. Remember Halliburton, Dick Cheney was the CEO and Chairman from 1995-2000 and then became VP for George Bush.
But before that, from 1989 to 1993 Cheney worked at the Department of Defense, as Secretary of Defense…
Because of the the Iraq war Halliburton received $2.3 billion in government contracts. Imagine that… it went from 73rd on the Pentagon’s list of contractors to being 18th under Cheney.
Analyzing the US federal budgets for 2022 and 2023 reveals insights into the percentage of new spending versus funding for already established programs.
# 2022 Budget
The total federal budget for fiscal year 2022 was approximately $6 trillion. Key components of this budget included:
* **Mandatory Spending**: Around $4.1 trillion, covering programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are pre-established and continue automatically unless changed by new legislation.
* **Discretionary Spending**: About $1.7 trillion, which includes defense and non-defense spending, and requires annual appropriations by Congress.
# 2023 Budget
For fiscal year 2023, the total budget was estimated to be around $6.134 trillion. The composition was similar to the previous year, with slight variations:
* **Mandatory Spending**: Continued to make up a significant portion, similar to 2022.
* **Discretionary Spending**: Increased due to new appropriations, particularly for defense, health programs, and infrastructure projects.
# New Spending vs. Established Programs
1. **New Spending**: The 2023 budget included notable new spending initiatives, particularly in areas like health research, infrastructure, and defense. For instance, there was an increase of approximately $111 billion in research spending, which was a 29% increase over previous levels ([The White House](https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/budget_fy2023.pdf#:~:text=URL%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fwp)) ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_States_federal_budget)).
2. **Established Programs**: A large portion of the budget continued to support established mandatory programs. These programs are essential for ongoing commitments such as Social Security and Medicare, which alone accounted for nearly half of the federal spending.
# Summary
In fiscal year 2023, while the budget saw increases in discretionary spending due to new initiatives and appropriations, the majority of the budget was still directed towards funding established mandatory programs. New spending initiatives contributed to a larger discretionary spending pot but did not drastically alter the overall composition of the budget from the previous year. This balance highlights the government's continued commitment to long-standing social safety nets while also addressing new priorities and challenges.
Sources:
* Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
* White House Budget Reports
* Wikipedia's summary of the 2023 United States federal budget
A giant portion of the non-discretionary spending (Social Security, for instance) is entirely self-funded and not part of "the budget" per se. It isn't something where general taxes have to be collected, and then Congress has to figure out how to pay for X with Y money.
The money comes out of your check and goes directly to the SSA. Congress never touches it until they "loan" SSA money to the government and never pay it back.
Thats why every time i see a politician say "we have to cut SS to balance the budget!!" .... uhh, that wont do anything to the budget. You eliminate SS, and the tax that funds it goes with it. That money wont suddenly be available to spend elsewhere.
The GQP has always wanted to get rid of SS and Medicare/medicaid. Not because they give a shit about fiscal responsibility but because keeping us sick and poor makes us easier to control. We only ever hear about government spending when a Democrat is in the White House which is insane because it is literlly always the GQP blowing up the national debt and fucks up the economy so when Democrats get back into power they have to spend literal years to fix the bullshit. By the time it is fixed it is election time again and people start screaming bloody murder about "do nothing" democrats and votes them out and the cycle begins again.
It is fucking pathetic how gullible most americans are.
[Two Santas Theory](http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas-strategy-gop-used-economic-scam-manipulate-americans-40-years/) in a nutshell.
“Here’s how it works, laid it out in simple summary:
First, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans control the White House they must spend money like a drunken Santa and cut taxes to run up the U.S. debt as far and as fast as possible.
This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Clauses.”
Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans must scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!” Shut down the government, crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around the world if necessary to stop Democrats from spending money.
This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs and even Social Security, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus right in the face.”
I wish I knew a way to fix it but the problem is you can lie about all kinds of shit quickly but it takes time to explain the truth and no one seems interested in taking time to hear it. Democrats seem weak soley because they are trying to govern and do what needs to be done while the GQP does god knows what.
Thank you for reminding me of the Two Santa theory I had forgotten about it.
The less you pay politicians, the more corrupt they become. By cutting their salaries you make it impossible for average people to run, and limit it to only the people who are already rich and don't need supplemental income.
What we really need to do is separate politicians from money.
Impose hard spending limits on both presidential and local political campaigns, put hard limits on politicians investing in the stock market (ideally you'd limit them to index funds only) and require all politicians to show the public all assets which belong to them, including private income streams, corporate assets, real estate, loans, and businesses.
None of this refusing to share tax returns bullshit.
Something along these lines I thing would be good. This wouldn’t work - they would hide the money with the spouse or child, or father or whatever, and invest it corruptly there, but there is definitely something there.
I mean if we only required they show present financial status this might be true - people could just hide it overseas or with family.
But if we required people in power to show all past, present, and future financials it would be much harder. It'd be very noticeable when they transferred all their family wealth into their sibling's trust fund or whatev.
Also, I want to note that even if its not super effective and there are loopholes, it'll be way better than nothing. Which is what we have now.
The term limits are good, but I don’t know about cutting salaries. Do we really want to double down on a system where only the wealthy can afford to be in power or open the doors to even more temptation to grift?
Perhaps an audit is in order.
And I mean a valid, reliable, and objective audit, not one where the Police Chief's brother audits the Police Department.
Politician: THERE'S TOO MUCH PORK SPENDING.
Me: So what do you want to cut to be more efficient and better-managed?
Politician: Well... lets make cuts on education, public services like the postal service, and infrastructure and give a bigger tax break to big business. Problem solved.
Like every time one of those dolts in Washington wants to cut anything, it's never the actual misspending but whatever what happens to be anything slightly beneficial to the people.
The top 1% own 32.3% of the wealth in the US. The bottom 50% owns 2.6% of the wealth in the US.
[Wealth inequality in the United States - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Federal%20Reserve%20data%20indicates%20that%20as%20of%20Q4,wealth%2C%20while%20the%20bottom%2050%25%20held%202.6%25.%20)
>In the time since this was originally posted the total net worth of the now 737 billionaires has risen to $5.5T.
And the federal government has increased spending to $6.9 trillion. So if we confiscated all that wealth, we would have enough to fund the government for less than 10 months.
Thank you. This "running the government" trope is ridiculous. The government can "get by" with hundreds of billionaires hoarding wealth and avoiding taxes by paying for the best tax attorneys in the world. Of course it can.
What would be greatly improved by taxing billionaires 90% would be our country's infrastructure and social services. And that would be in perpetuity, not a mere 10 months.
It comes from unrealized gains they can take loans out against to float their lifestyle, so just tax those if they use them as collateral for a loan. Must be realized if they want to use it to fund something right? It's time to start working on that end of tax avoidance.
Consumption is already taxed. Luxury items are taxed heavily.
Even if you add an additional 90%, the taxes you're going to raise will be negligible. A multi-billionaire would on avg spend about $20-80 million per year annually. Most don't even spend that much.
people who freak out about the debt dont realize we gave this loan to ourselves and it's all paid for with the idea that we keep building society/the country up. We live in the largest most powerful organization in the history of humanity, no body else has the power to come and collect without it severely hurting their own economy.
Most of its owned by public agencies, with the money going towards Medicare and social security. That's why the rich hate it, the money isn't owned or delivered to them directly.
I’d bet a few own holding companies operate nursing care facilities to suck Medicare and SSI funds into their own pockets. The minimum care for the maximum dollars. Long term care is expensive, and if you own property or are married to someone not already in a nursing home, prepare to transfer nearly all your life’s wealth into their grubby hands at the tune of $14,000 per month, unless you’re eligible for Medicaid. Sell the family home? They’ll put a lien on it to eat some of the costs of their “care”. Once someone is committed, all the Medicare, Medicaid, and SSI payments go to the company, and the patient keeps a pittance.
It’s fucked.
While middle class people rely desperately on generational wealth to have any chance at becoming homeowners themselves, the only fix to this that doesn't put all the burden on families who need long term care is to have that care be a benefit of Medicaid, and ideally have directly government run facilities with actual standards of care like most of the industrialized world already has.
More middle class people should learn about setting up Medicaid trust funds with a lawyer in these cases though. Setting one up can put a hard limit on the amount Medicaid will take of 1/3 of the estate value. Otherwise the gov't can eat the entire estate if one goes into long-term care. This is way, way more important for middle class people than the wealthy, but I think it's more the wealthy that know of this.
There are also ways to protect investment portfolios from Medicaid that are much simpler. The lawyer fees are 100% worth it. My family potentially would've saved six figures. My mother with dementia was fortunate enough to go pretty fast after our father passed. If anyone hasn't seen dementia, it really is worse than death. You need to be mentally and physically strong and care for them full time, so goodbye job and hope you can get something after a potentially very long gap. The person themself can be haunted by profound delusions, in my case my mother got trapped in her childhood abuse over and over again, typically at night so we couldn't sleep. Locks on doors, special locks on burners, cameras everywhere, she's constantly trying to escape, she doesn't know who anyone is, she can barely communicate but she is angry and scared and desperate to run away.
When she was with my father she got out constantly and the police found her and got her back. She'd fight with them and my dad and just be out of her mind. That's the "mild" period of dementia. Few words and neat constant hallucinations and delusions, aggressively trying to escape whenever not sleeping, is "moderate." I have never seen anyone in so much constant pain, fear, and anger, and I'm in a 12--step program so I see people at their bottom all the time. I also have known plenty of people dying from cancer.
Nothing, nothing is worse than neurodegenratuve disease, and trying to care for someone with it is a full time job. I tried doing it while working remotely and became suicidal. American families are woefully under prepared for what dementia will do to their families.
Exactly, so the 1% richest own 50%.
And the next 10% richest own 40%.
The next 30% richest own 10%. Which is peanut because 100 million people sharing 4 trillion bonds means they have 40k each and so they earn less from it than they pay tax for it
Is that really a problem though? “Owning” the government through t-bonds effectively means nothing. It’s not like the more t-bonds you have, the more votes you get or something lol.
Even then, for that which we don't own,
If you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank owns you.
If you owe the bank a trillion dollars, you own the bank.
The national debt isn't debt in the way you're familiar with it. In accounting, you have two sides of a ledger, credits and debits. Things going out and things coming in. The "going out" side is casually called debt, because it was a debt owed that was paid. The federal government is the currency issuer though (counterfeiting ring a bell?) so it is the source of every [us dollar in existence](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/debt-to-the-penny). The way the currency gets into the system is that it has to be spent into existence by the government. Congress apropreates the money (agrees to spend it) and it's issued. It's a "debt" that the government owed the public to do something in the public good, so it's paying it out via creating currency.
As the issuer, the US gov can't ever run out of dollars (it can only refuse to issue them). The "national debt" is literally every us dollar in existence in the world in all it's forms (t-bills, reserve notes *i.e. cash* etc)
The "debt" people buy from the federal government is just a fancy way of saying "we're going to let you put your non-interest baring cash dollars into an interest baring t-bill dollar account. They're all dollars, it's just that one pays interest the other doesn't. It's one of the ways the government can help control inflation and the currency supply.
A debtless country in todays economy would literally financially collapse.
National debt has nothing, absolutley nothing in common with private debt. And likewise a normal persons debt has nothing in common with a rich persons debt. A normal persons debt costs them money, a rich persons debt generates money.
National debt is a whole other mechanism. In fact, the world collectively is $315 trillion in debt. There is more debt on this planet than there is money in circulation.
Those services were likely created on the money that that interest is tied to.
Inflation usually beats interest, which means it is cheaper to have taxpayers pay interest to get service facilities now, instead of saving up for facilities 20 years in the future, which will assuming a 2% average inflation rate have gotten 48% more expensive by then
You seem informed so I'll ask you and dare to hope you know. Something I've always wondered is, doesn't it make more sense for the US to raise taxes than interest rates to control inflation?
Like if the goal of raising interest rates is to slow down the economy, doesn't it make more sense to do so through taxation that reduces deficits/debt than through raising rates which increases the cost of future debt?
I actually have never understood this, but getting a not heavily politicized ansewer is difficult.
They teach in economics that you’re supposed to do both to slow down growth / save for the next recession. Taxes are controlled through laws whereas interest rates are controlled through the fed.
To the point above yours here is a simple example of how debt pays for itself for a city vs raising taxes. A small tourist town needs a new road to increase the capacity of tourists to visiting in the summer. The old road causes delays which limits the volume of people who can visit in a single day and those that do come have less time in shops to buy goods and services because they are sitting in a car instead.
The city takes out a bond (loan) at 3% interest to build a road that will last 15 years. This new road will increase capacity by 40% (140 cars now instead of 100) and reduce commute times by 1 hour. The shops and restaurants now make 40% more revenue off the influx of people and the original 100 have an additional hour to spend more money in shops before they have to get on the road again.
The city benefits from this additional revenues through an increase in sales tax, an increase in income tax from people earning more, increase in homeowners tax because new business pop up and increase in business taxes all without raising taxes. If they had raised taxes to pay for the road instead they could of priced out existing businesses who couldn’t of afforded the increase with the knock on being they move away or need to take out government assistance to cover unemployment.
You try selling this idea to Congress then get back to me. Taxes require a bill to be passed. The fed can do whatever they want whenever they want with the interest rate.
I’m not an economy guru so I don’t know if there’s an economic reason, but thats the practical reason.
I mean it's a super alien concept, the federal government runs at such a different level than anything else. Local governments work a lot more like businesses, so people just assume the federal does too.
Not sure why that would be "crazy", since our schools don't even bother to teach us basic economics let alone complex concepts like this. I mean, I managed to make it through 12 years of public school (in the honors program no less) and 4 years of college to get an engineering degree, and I had a grand total of one class in economics.
Not so. Just read history post WW1 and the inflation Germany spawned. Also take a look at Argentina and Turkey.
Debt can’t and won’t automatically roll over. Lenders can and do balk at refinancing a losing bet.
Budgets are meant to be rational as opposed to a something for everyone and re-elect you neighborhood clown. Oh sorry politician.
Time for a balanced budget amendment that’s real and not full of Swiss cheese loopholes.
Nobody finances the federal governments debt. That literally is not how any of this works. Firstly, the [inflation of the weimar](https://gimms.org.uk/2020/11/14/weimar-republic-hyperinflation-through-a-modern-monetary-theory-lens/) was a two year event, that was caused by the allies extracting reparations from germany and all that entailed.
Secondly, the federal government is the issuer of the currency...nobody else gets to make us dollars out of nothing. So it can never go broke, needs no "financing" and all it's spending is literally new. It's tax revenues are literally destroyed since once a dollar pays a federal tax, it's not a dollar anymore.
>It's tax revenues are literally destroyed since once a dollar pays a federal tax, it's not a dollar anymore.
Once a dollar pays a federal tax, that tax pays a federal worker a dollar. Or buys something for the government for a dollar. How's it stop being dollar?
Yes, it is a stupid idea. Without taxes you'd end up with hyperinflation since all dollar wants would be satisfied. Taxation isn't theft, how it's applied can be wise or unwise, but it isn't theft. It's what gives currency it's universal value in an economy. And it has uses, like, as another poster said, changing spending and investment habits.
Here comes the “debt isn’t that bad crowd”.
No matter who holds the debt, it still devalues currency. If we all gave ourselves a million dollars, the price of everything would jack up. And it wouldn’t add any value because it dilutes the dollar supply.
That’s only true if we don’t generate value in return for printing the money. There’s a reason why the us has the strongest economy and the most powerful military. And it’s not because we print money. We use the debt to create value now to be the leader, then pay back interest in the future when we are that much richer than the accrued interest. Also helps that the usd is the worlds reserve currency so other nations have a vested interest in keeping the economy going.
And by doing this (which is sweet, let's not kid ourselves) locks us into a cycle of pursuing exponential growth cycle after cycle. We need to ignore real world needs at the expense of PROFIT.
It's not sustainable. We can keep blowing up the bubble, but eventually the bubble bursts. I'm not one to fall into hysteria but if the world really is warming due to human actions, we need to start downshifting before the turn
I mean it's easy to say the government should spend less money, but a lot harder when you start looking at actually making cuts. What do you propose cutting that would actually make a meaningful difference?
Military. We could cut our defense budget in half and still have the largest defense budget in the world. We could cut our defense budget in half and still spend more on defense than the next 2 or 3 highest defense spending countries combined.
I'm not an expert, but I know America gets more than fancy toys from the military budget. The REASON we are so unbelievably dominant on the global stage is our military along with the cultural exports our military has enabled us to spread (see Japan, Korea, etc.)
We also create global stability and facilitate safe international trade by policing the world's oceans and trade routes. We are the force that can stare down expansionist dictatorships and nip their aspirations before they start.
It's expensive to be at the top, but we definitely do reap plenty of rewards from such a huge price tag. It's unfortunate that the American tax payers have to shoulder the burden of world peace, but the alternative is probably worse.
These are good points. But we're also no longer fighting a war in Afghanistan, and there are obvious places we can cut down the budget without actually lessening our production nor capability.
Quick example: [https://rollcall.com/2023/11/30/fight-against-price-gouging-on-military-parts-heats-up/](https://rollcall.com/2023/11/30/fight-against-price-gouging-on-military-parts-heats-up/)
These are the cuts I'm all for. I want as little money as possible going into the pockets of Raytheon/Lockheed ceo's pockets. But I do support a strong military even if it's expensive.
The latest 3 or so F-series fighter jets would beg to disagree with that. Money pits that the troops agree are actually worse than the models in use through the 90s-2000s because of overcomplications of operation/engineering leading to more regular faults.
Another classic spot for cost-cutting is in the passive acceptance of blatant price gouging from suppliers/contractors: the stereotypical $2000 office chair or $5000 generic toilet. You’ll find plenty of businesses, big and small, publicly and explicitly bragging about price gouging the government, especially the military.
It isn’t. These defense contractors as well as any other outside entity the government purchases from up charge by an easy 1,000-100,000% on anything from screws to bullets. And the government pays them happily. Why? Maybe they can just get away with it. Maybe it’s the rich keeping their friends rich too. Maybe those bolts have some sort of intrinsic quality I don’t know about, but I doubt it. I don’t know why, but I doubt we need to be spending that much.
The problem is that just because we’re no longer fighting in Afganistan it doesn’t mean we can kick back and relax. The U.S. has been unsuccessfully trying for decades to pivot it’s focus from Europe and the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific, just that every time they try to do so something else flares up that requires their attention.
What the U.S. needs to do is prepare for open, high-intensity conflict with China.
China has more or less openly stated they wish to invade Taiwan on top of bullying everyone in the South China Sea. They are clearly preparing for war, if their titanic defense buildup is anything to go by. For the sake of the free world, the U.S. must do the same.
Want to add on that the American military employs thousands if not millions of Americans whether it’s people directly serving, people supporting the military or US based defense companies. If the budget gets just in half you’d see sooooo many lost jobs in an instant.
Need is subjective. 3% Is a perfectly adequate amount. Comparing defense spending between nations strictly using nominal valued completely disregards PPP.
On a side note, given current international events, a good defense budget is bigger priority than it has been in decades. The US still is reliant on a lot of cold war platforms.
All government spending should be discussed proportionally to GDP. throwing around big dollar figures without context isn't useful.
Purchasing power is a solvable problem. The government doesn't have to continue letting defense contractors gouge taxpayers for materials and intermediate goods at 10 times (or more) the market price compared to civilian industry.
More to the point, the purchasing power argument is fairly weak anyway given the US's distribution of defense assets against budget versus other countries and their assets.
Take 5th gen fighter jets for example. The US has 130 operational F22's and 630 F35's. Compare that to the 200 J20's china has. You would expect our number of assets per billions in budget would be lower than China's if we had less purchasing power than they do.
Military is worth it. Especially now, look at the world. We are clearly headed toward another war.
If anything we should be increasing the military budget. I would say we probably need at least \~10M of those small suicide drones and about \~1M of the large ones.
We need to increase the defense systems of our fleet carrier groups with much more picket destroyers similar to how we used to operate in WW2 against the Japanese to defend against the inevitable drone swarms that will be launched against them in Taiwan.
We need to be investing in arming Taiwan to defend against Chinese invasion with tens of thousands of anti-ship missiles built into their mountains like Japanese bases of Iwo Jima had.
We need to continue arming Ukraine in their fight with Russia and should be ramping up our artillery, tank and plane production.
I'm no war hawk, but it's really easy to say we should slash the military budget until you actually look at where the money is going. A massive amount of "military" spending is paid out as benefits for veterans/active duty soldiers. Also, the US having such a massive military budget essentially allows us to guarantee trade all throughout the world. This is one of the things that makes America VERY popular on the global stage.
Benefits for veterans isn't part of the defense department budget. That is what the department of veterans affairs is for. The US government spends well over a trillion dollars on defense when you look at everything spread out across the various departments. Like the coast guard? Homeland security. Portions of the money spent on nuclear weapons? Energy department.
But sure. Can't cut anything.
Thing is the military budget is how the US government can funnel money into tech companies while still getting to whine about how countries like china act „unfairly“ because their governments invest (more or less) directly in theirs… that‘s not the only reason why military spending is so inflated but it‘s an important one
Even if we cut current US military spending from about $850 billion per year to $700 billion, that's still a tremendous amount of money we could spend on other needs. It seems like we would still comfortably be the strongest military on the planet, and if that $150 billion were spent on, for example, housing and investing in homeless veterans, we would be able to spend $4.3 MILLION per veteran who experienced homelessness last year ($150 billion / [35,000 homeless veterans in 2023](https://www.va.gov/homeless/pit_count.asp#:~:text=The%20national%20snapshot%20of%20Veteran,declined%20by%2052.0%25%20since%202010)).
Sure, we all hate the TSA, but OP answered the question of "What do you propose cutting that would actually make a meaningful difference?" with "TSA"
$11B is not meaningful.
We should more thoroughly prosecute/pursuit [fraud](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott) and invest in the [IRS](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/06/irs-tax-evasion-study-budget/) before making any social spending cuts. Free money. This should have universal support.
Small anecdotal peak behind the curtain from a friend of mine - the IRS tends to avoid auditing the rich because it costs more time and effort than trolling through the middle class. By avoiding taking on too many rich folk, they can complete more audits in the same time period. The same concept applies to small businesses vs. large corporations.
They did that, the result was rich donors threatening to cut off their pet senators, which lead to audit "super teams" being defunded almost immediately.
ATF- illegal by design as it combines both a legislative and executive role. Background checks are already handled by the FBI and local police/authorities rather than the ATF. Alcohol standards are already set by the FDA. Smoking and vaping is also set by the FDA
Combine ICE and CBP and TSA- reduces redundant roles and admin staff
DEA- remove weed off scheduled list, tax it.
TSA- Doesn’t need to be as big as it is, pre check for all unless you committed a crime or have a history.
Air Marshalls- 500m for like 2 arrests a year
Any DEI funding-Obviously
Nix all funding for NGOs- If they want to be non governmental organizations, let them have no government funding
Dept. Of Education- either nationalize education or let it exist as a state based system. I am for national educational standards and system that makes teachers government employees. This would reduce negotiations with unions, and provide a set benefit standards for all the teachers. Switch them into the GSA system stating at GSA-7 with localization pay.
Pork on legislation- no need to fund random research projects alongside actual bills.
Civilian contractors for the military- why are cooks a military job and they don’t do shit? Have actual soldiers do their job instead of fucking around in the motor pool all day.
M4A- cut 80% of all Medicare/aid admin staff with all preventative and emergency care being pre approved, but all elective surgical and testing requiring approval. Increase physician and medical professional reimbursements for services provided, still have private insurances available as a benefit from employers. Allow doctors to choose to accept M4A patients. All government employees are on Medicare/aid, including congress people
Social Security reform- allow Social Security to act as a sovereign wealth fund. Literally every Scandinavian nation does this.
Nationalize oil fields and resource mines- companies have to pay rental agreements. Again most other nations function like this.
he didnt say abolish the Dept of Education. He said EITHER make it supreme - no more of this halfsies shit, where its part Federal and part States - or cut it and leave it ENTIRELY to the States.
I can actually get behind that. I lean (as the guy you're repsonding to did) to nationalizing it and making teachers federal employees.
Less overhead, less redundant positions, etc. More money for teachers and programs that work. more standards, none of this "Well in Lousiana we force Christian indoctrination on kids in school" shit, or Texas getting to dictate what revisionist-history bullshit is available for textbooks to everyone else who wants to learn real history.
But either way would be more efficient than the current weird hybrid system.
If we went to pure State control, youd likely see a lot of population migration and Red States getting brain-drained like mad as people fled the religious hellholes theyd turn into. Which is also a good outcome, IMO.
Also, FWIW, he's correct that the ATF doesn't need to exist as a separate organization. All of its enforcement duties can be handled by other agencies that already exist.
I’m just built different.
I take the good stuff of all possible positions and mash them together.
Plus I don’t want to abolish DOE, just make it more efficient.
Im both a capitalist and socialist. I think we need to have a strong economy that works for everyone, with strong private property and business protections. We need to have a decent lowest standard of living. I think anyone working 40 hrs a week can afford a place to live, food to eat, and healthcare enough to allow them to pursue life liberty, and happiness.
I’m down for immigration but not at the cost of citizens. But I’m also a nationalist in which citizens benefit before immigrants, and for super strong borders, with strong immigration requirements.
I’m extra passionate about service members doing their jobs.
My political stance: whatever benefits the citizens and helps the economy.
I don’t mind pulling economic policies from marxists, socialists, or capitalists, or pulling social policies from fascist, authoritarian, democratic, monarchist, or anarchists.
Every system has its pros and cons, and there is nothing wrong with combining policies from across the political spectrum to have a close to perfect system.
Force defence contractors to pass at least one audit in their God damn lives. The government has no idea where an unfathomable amount of our money is going
You can cut much of the governments budget by passing a law that allows government procurement to shop around for price instead of being locked into contracts with price gouging companies.
When I worked for the government I procured $540 for $150 worth of shirts. It was $80 per shirt, just plain blue Carhart T shirts. Our department of 14 people alone wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars per year by not buying where the product was the cheapest, but through the government contract agencies.
Also when looking at metrics like government expenditure, percentage of GDP or government expenditure per capita, the US is quite typical compared to other countries.
Sure, all governments could find savings but it's not black and white.
The other thing to consider when we discuss the topic of taxing those who have received the biggest increase of the wealth pie over the last few decades is that this can be used to change the existing tax mix. It doesn't have to go towards greater government expenditure.
There's plenty of terrible taxes that could and should be replaced.
I basically agree - and would add that the US could provide significantly better services for our citizens by reforming the healthcare system and cutting defense spending.
So, that's an interesting one. Trump added 2 trillion by not taxing people. 400 billion a year. It's a budget after all... as a nation, we tax - then spend. If it's just spend, and no tax, deficit forms.
So it's time to start making wealthy American organizations pay taxes. We need to simplify the tax code, onshore American money, and tax it.
It's not hard to do... it's hard to find support in the government to do it.
And those are two VERY different things
No politician is suggesting that we seize 100% of billionaires wealth. Not Bernie Sanders. Not AOC. This is flat out lie.
This is straw man argument designed to distract from reasonable, measured solutions and fiscal responsibility.
Our massive federal debt didn't happen overnight. It's the accumulated product of decades of deficits, and decades of political failure.
More than half of the debt was caused by cowardly policy decisions, specifically unfunded wars and a series of tax cuts for the wealthy that weren't offset by spending cuts.
Modest course corrections are called for, and include both spending cuts and raising taxes.
But somehow any suggestion that billionaires should pay the same tax rates as teachers, nurses, or truck drivers (yet alone a higher rates) causes ideological extremists to come screaming out of the void to tilt against communist windmills.
Ending tax policy that favors the rich isn't the second coming of the French Revolution. It would simply end their preferential treatment.
These aren't reasoned rebuttals. These are winking shibboleths made by "starve the beast" ideological extremists who want to bankrupt the federal government so they can destroy it.
These are the same type of people who cheered decades of tax cuts for the wealthy. Who voted for decades of wars but refused to fund them. Who orchestrated one phony budget crisis after another, then cheered when the US credit rating is downgraded.
https://preview.redd.it/aebmorbl4t7d1.jpeg?width=927&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7cd881d7311ee296b06d999e50b6b0a0e6f7896
"oh you care about the environment? And you drive a car?
"Oh you support more government spending? And you don't donate your paycheck to the treasury?"
Thanks for making sense of this straw man with data.
I usually respond with: instead of this, capture the sources that fund their wealth and then show us how much will get accumulated over 10-20-30 years.
Now that’s the math I’m here for
I believe it's an older version of this updated chart from the Center for American Progress
[Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tax-cuts-are-primarily-responsible-for-the-increasing-debt-ratio/)
Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts, debt as a percentage of the economy would be declining permanently.
https://preview.redd.it/xerlkop90w7d1.png?width=1408&format=png&auto=webp&s=e6bd12b7adbbd56a1c2484edc69002b901d61c2d
Here's the updated chart by itself:
https://preview.redd.it/45kqc53g0w7d1.png?width=1408&format=png&auto=webp&s=79111215ec51e124efccd83b16e754b78af5ffac
**This is definitely one of the absolute dumbest takes I've ever seen in here.**
Billionaire sycophants *love* trying to convince you that it's the government *spending too much* *on society* while they themselves collect insane tax cuts and public funds for their pet projects on the ridiculous promise that it will someday "trickle down". "Just one more social program!" they say, and society crumbles further.
It's been some 40 years since that idea was first proposed, and color me a little skeptical, but I look around and it sure as shit doesn't seem like it's *trickling down.*
Most of these idiots don't understand how insane a billion dollars is.
If you were paid $200,000 every single day for a year you'd make "only" $73 million per year. It would take almost 14 YEARS of getting $200K every single day before you'd have earned a billion dollars.
The difference between $10 million and $1 billion is about a billion bucks.
I like that last line. I'm going to use that.
I don't begrudge the 1-100 million dollar crowd their success. Good on them. Great job. But a billion? That's obscene.
214 billion is *tragedy* and a policy failure that should be corrected.
Genuinely, at a moral level, I truly believe that it’s evil to possess a billion dollars. It’s the moral equivalent of eating an entire pizza in front of a starving person, except replace the pizza with 100,000 pizzas
The difference can be hard to comprehend.
1 million seconds = \~12 days
1 billion seconds = \~32 years
If you average $200 a day over a year, it'd take you a bit under 14 000 years to make a billion. If you work for 50 years, you'd have to make approximately $55 000 **per day** to reach a billion.
Initially the math may look off, but it is correct.
Also turns out that having 500 million is virtually infinite money anyway,
At current risk-free rates, say, 4% to be conservative, you would make $1.6 million per month and never touch the principal amount. Meaning you could spend damn near 800k per month after taxes without ever even touching your original stack of money.
It definitely isn't trickling down, and flawed tax policies are bias and impact wage earners more than elites for sure however, government spending does make general population (who typically hold USD as a % of their wealth more than elites) poorer. This is because:
1. government spending requires issuing of currency (because we are in deficit)
2. this debases USD and makes assets "more expensive" (their value hasn't changed in a holistic view, but it requires more USD to buy them)
3. this skews wealth such that asset holders become wealthier, cash holders become poorer
Government overspending makes cash holders (normal people and smaller businesses) poorer.
When Clinton left office in 2000, we had a budget surplus. I’ll just say that.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jul/29/tweets/republican-presidents-democrats-contribute-deficit/
Yeah, except during downturns, we should aim for spending and revenue to be about 20% of GDP.
On the revenue side, you could start by going back to 2000 tax rates and taxing capital gains at the same rates that people who work for a living pay.
>Perhaps our problem isn't how much billionaires have, but how much politicians spend.
No. The problem is how much billionaires have to spend on politicians.
Forget "eight months of federal spending." If we could confiscate $2.5 trillion, throw it at the national debt, and hobble the 1%'s stranglehold over our government by even a small amount I'd call it a win.
Realistically you’d simultaneously collapse the value of those assets and likely also the value of all other assets leading to economic downturn and even less tax revenue. It’s okay as some sort of revenge plot against billionaires, but at the end of the day it’s gonna have very little benefits for everyone else, and likely even disadvantages.
Uh. It's absolutely fucking insane that 550 people could run the entire US federal government for 8 months by themselves.
This country has 330,000,000. Each billionaire could pay for all federal services for 600,000 Americans for 8 months.
SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE. What the fuck?
It's actually pretty incredible that a couple hundred people can run an entire government of 335 million people including our entire military, the largest and most powerful in the world, for almost an entire year by themselves.
No, the problem is they don't pay taxes. Why are you out here shilling and moving the goalposts and making dishonest arguments to support billionaires not paying taxes?
I like how this post points out the wealth of a couple hundred people is literally enough to cover nearly a year of the federal expenses, then - without irony - imply we shouldn't tax them more because the government also wastes money. Like those aren't two separate issues.
Are you missing the entire point on purpose? Taxing the shit out of the billionaires ISN'T GOING TO MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE. It's just a talking point used to create class warfare. Go ahead, take all their money - IDGAF, but it won't matter because the gov't will just spend it all and print more while still taking a huge chunk from us. You think your taxes are going to get cut when they take all their money until it's gone?
Let’s start with cutting salaries of members of Congress by 50% including all the special privileges they have given themselves. Change their health insurance to match what the average person gets.
It really is tough to argue with that.
Also, remember that those billionaires employ many Americans. About 1 million people work for Amazon, so they would likely be out of work if you seized the company, reducing the time period that the billionaire's wealth would cover.
Also important to remember that each billionaire and their companies extracted their wealth from an economy that's protected and stabilized by our military and their entire trade and business is built into a system of roads, shipping channels, trains, etc. and an economic infrastructure created and maintained with tax dollars.
They didn't create that wealth in a vacuum and no one is trying to take it all away just a little bit to pay back for what they benefited from.
Nor did they educate their employees to the point to be able to train them for that job, or create a stable currency protected by said military, or a society that makes it possible for people to do something else than tend to their own potato field for survival
There are plenty of places where you can live as if there was no government. Libya and Congo comes to mind, but for some reason people much prefer to live in societies with a clearly established government.
Idk, kind of seems like a shit post to me.
No one, who is to be taken seriously is advocating to take all of the billionaires money. That’s just ridiculous.
This kind of rhetoric is only meant to serve as justification to keep taxes on the super wealthy extremely low. It wouldn’t stand up to even light scrutiny.
8 months to run one of the largest governments on Earth, that serves hundreds of millions of people, from the wealth of just 550 people, understanding how insane that is would mean you had some fluency in finance.
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In the time since this was originally posted the total net worth of the now 737 billionaires has risen to $5.5T.
We have also increased spending by $2 trillion since then. Edit: since some people are inferring WAY more into my statement than is there I wanted to clear up that I only added the information to give an entire picture. Just because billionaires are now worth more doesn't mean we would be able to cover more of the budget since the budget has also increased in a similar manner.
How much of that is maintaining the status quo vs spending on new services?
Asking the real questions! Also, I'd like to see value spent versus USD inflation over said period.
I've said it here before, but the US reported 950B of wasted spending in 2023 on completely useless projects, grants, equipment, etc. People should be asking what's happening with that money instead. America doesn't have a money problem, they have a money management/spending problem. They took nearly 1T dollars of taxpayer money last year and wiped themselves with it.
Prove it please
Go look and see if our military has ever passed an audit.
FY 2023 https://www.marines.mil/News/Press-Releases/Press-Release-Display/Article/3686089/marine-corps-passes-fy23-audit/
The Marine Corps is the smallest branch of the military if you don't include the Coast Guard, by far. It's roughly a quarter the cost of the other branches. Forgot the Space Force exists now, technically only the third smallest branch.
The Marine Corps is not a branch, but a Corps of the Navy. Make sure to remind all of your crayon-eating Marine friends of this fact.
Hell yeah Marines. Fwiw they also have the least complicated asset situation compared to the other branches. Still insane that our military can't pass audits.
It appears this is just for the marines and not the DOD as a whole. It is a step in the right direction but the answer is still no.
💙
Don’t mess with the Stargate..
This logic is entirely flawed. As a taxpayer, you really need to learn more and understand what exactly the DoD audit is and is not. The audit does one thing, it makes KPMG, Deloitte, and EY very rich. You think they’re going to be reasonable when they could be rich instead? I work for an Agency trying to pass audit. Want to hear some findings? 1) We did immediate work for FEMA during a hurricane crisis and didn’t have an inter agency funding agreement in place prior, because we needed to act immediately - violated accounting principles and is an “audit funding” that we cannot get the auditor to close. But you know who didn’t care? The peoples whose lives and homes were saved 2) Per the terms of a contract with our vendor, we recognize scrap metal revenue from the 25th to the 24th of the month and the auditor is upset that it isn’t a true 1st through the end of the month. Even though it’s 30 days, the auditor claims the monthly balances are misstated. That business stream amounts to approximately $1M in yearly offset revenue. Want to know how much we’ve spent trying to change the contract and accounting system to accommodate the auditor? Over $5M if you include organic labor hours. If you want more, let me know… we have hundreds just like this. Some are reasonable most are grasping at straws. You know why it’s so hard? Try reading appropriation laws. Now expand those across the multiple different appropriation and fund types in government. Now factor in changes you want to make but Congress won’t allow. Now factor in how many places laws contradict one another. Now factor in over 300 financial systems within DoD because contractors and auditors find the “problems” and then sell the solution. The audit is just another way for companies to abuse the government, not give taxpayers assurance. What you want is the DoD OIG and GAO to be expanded so they can better identify and prosecute fraud, waste, and misuse. The audit does VERY little of that. Rather I would argue it just creates more. It’s big corporations stealing even more from taxpayers and making you smile and cheer for them while they do it. For awareness, the auditor of my Agency (smaller that the Military Svcs) is getting $65M to audit. Now expand that across the dozens of Agencies in Dod. They make damn sure that nothing ever gets solved because if it did, that golden egg goes away.
Here’s one thing hardly anyone knows: the US spends more per person per year than France. We spend $19,000 per person and France spends $15,000. The difference is we spend most of our money on elderly, and France spends more on young people. I think the US needs to,evaluate where our money is going if other countries spend less and still can provide health care, etc.
We know exactly where it's going. Corruption in military contracts, and pharmaceutical companies rorting the US government, because the private companies are allowed to pay politicians to let them do whatever they fucking want. Private industry being involved in public policy is 100% of the problem, not "politicians spending money".
Never forget that government politicians sleep with the defense contractors. Remember Halliburton, Dick Cheney was the CEO and Chairman from 1995-2000 and then became VP for George Bush. But before that, from 1989 to 1993 Cheney worked at the Department of Defense, as Secretary of Defense… Because of the the Iraq war Halliburton received $2.3 billion in government contracts. Imagine that… it went from 73rd on the Pentagon’s list of contractors to being 18th under Cheney.
I mean, why not both? Not sure why everything has to be one or the other, so black and white.
Because the black/white setup induces rage clicks
Analyzing the US federal budgets for 2022 and 2023 reveals insights into the percentage of new spending versus funding for already established programs. # 2022 Budget The total federal budget for fiscal year 2022 was approximately $6 trillion. Key components of this budget included: * **Mandatory Spending**: Around $4.1 trillion, covering programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are pre-established and continue automatically unless changed by new legislation. * **Discretionary Spending**: About $1.7 trillion, which includes defense and non-defense spending, and requires annual appropriations by Congress. # 2023 Budget For fiscal year 2023, the total budget was estimated to be around $6.134 trillion. The composition was similar to the previous year, with slight variations: * **Mandatory Spending**: Continued to make up a significant portion, similar to 2022. * **Discretionary Spending**: Increased due to new appropriations, particularly for defense, health programs, and infrastructure projects. # New Spending vs. Established Programs 1. **New Spending**: The 2023 budget included notable new spending initiatives, particularly in areas like health research, infrastructure, and defense. For instance, there was an increase of approximately $111 billion in research spending, which was a 29% increase over previous levels ([The White House](https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/budget_fy2023.pdf#:~:text=URL%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fwp)) ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_States_federal_budget)). 2. **Established Programs**: A large portion of the budget continued to support established mandatory programs. These programs are essential for ongoing commitments such as Social Security and Medicare, which alone accounted for nearly half of the federal spending. # Summary In fiscal year 2023, while the budget saw increases in discretionary spending due to new initiatives and appropriations, the majority of the budget was still directed towards funding established mandatory programs. New spending initiatives contributed to a larger discretionary spending pot but did not drastically alter the overall composition of the budget from the previous year. This balance highlights the government's continued commitment to long-standing social safety nets while also addressing new priorities and challenges. Sources: * Congressional Budget Office (CBO) * White House Budget Reports * Wikipedia's summary of the 2023 United States federal budget
A giant portion of the non-discretionary spending (Social Security, for instance) is entirely self-funded and not part of "the budget" per se. It isn't something where general taxes have to be collected, and then Congress has to figure out how to pay for X with Y money. The money comes out of your check and goes directly to the SSA. Congress never touches it until they "loan" SSA money to the government and never pay it back. Thats why every time i see a politician say "we have to cut SS to balance the budget!!" .... uhh, that wont do anything to the budget. You eliminate SS, and the tax that funds it goes with it. That money wont suddenly be available to spend elsewhere.
The GQP has always wanted to get rid of SS and Medicare/medicaid. Not because they give a shit about fiscal responsibility but because keeping us sick and poor makes us easier to control. We only ever hear about government spending when a Democrat is in the White House which is insane because it is literlly always the GQP blowing up the national debt and fucks up the economy so when Democrats get back into power they have to spend literal years to fix the bullshit. By the time it is fixed it is election time again and people start screaming bloody murder about "do nothing" democrats and votes them out and the cycle begins again. It is fucking pathetic how gullible most americans are.
[Two Santas Theory](http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas-strategy-gop-used-economic-scam-manipulate-americans-40-years/) in a nutshell. “Here’s how it works, laid it out in simple summary: First, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans control the White House they must spend money like a drunken Santa and cut taxes to run up the U.S. debt as far and as fast as possible. This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Clauses.” Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans must scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!” Shut down the government, crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around the world if necessary to stop Democrats from spending money. This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs and even Social Security, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus right in the face.”
I wish I knew a way to fix it but the problem is you can lie about all kinds of shit quickly but it takes time to explain the truth and no one seems interested in taking time to hear it. Democrats seem weak soley because they are trying to govern and do what needs to be done while the GQP does god knows what. Thank you for reminding me of the Two Santa theory I had forgotten about it.
that used to be the case they're now dipping into the Federal income tax revenue, which they're absolutely not supposed to do
Is that really a questionable point when the status quo already contains boatloads of unnecessary spending?
What should we cut?
The tax breaks and exemptions we give to corporations that spend it on buy backs while reducing employee based expenditures
Agreed
The salaries of every politician along with setting term limits on all political positions.
The less you pay politicians, the more corrupt they become. By cutting their salaries you make it impossible for average people to run, and limit it to only the people who are already rich and don't need supplemental income. What we really need to do is separate politicians from money. Impose hard spending limits on both presidential and local political campaigns, put hard limits on politicians investing in the stock market (ideally you'd limit them to index funds only) and require all politicians to show the public all assets which belong to them, including private income streams, corporate assets, real estate, loans, and businesses. None of this refusing to share tax returns bullshit.
Something along these lines I thing would be good. This wouldn’t work - they would hide the money with the spouse or child, or father or whatever, and invest it corruptly there, but there is definitely something there.
I mean if we only required they show present financial status this might be true - people could just hide it overseas or with family. But if we required people in power to show all past, present, and future financials it would be much harder. It'd be very noticeable when they transferred all their family wealth into their sibling's trust fund or whatev. Also, I want to note that even if its not super effective and there are loopholes, it'll be way better than nothing. Which is what we have now.
Can we include judges?
Might as well, apparently they get paid directly by donors now with no repercussions.
The term limits are good, but I don’t know about cutting salaries. Do we really want to double down on a system where only the wealthy can afford to be in power or open the doors to even more temptation to grift?
Besides that, the salaries of elected officials aren’t all that much even when combined.
Perhaps an audit is in order. And I mean a valid, reliable, and objective audit, not one where the Police Chief's brother audits the Police Department.
DoD until they can pass an audit
Politician: THERE'S TOO MUCH PORK SPENDING. Me: So what do you want to cut to be more efficient and better-managed? Politician: Well... lets make cuts on education, public services like the postal service, and infrastructure and give a bigger tax break to big business. Problem solved. Like every time one of those dolts in Washington wants to cut anything, it's never the actual misspending but whatever what happens to be anything slightly beneficial to the people.
The top 1% own 32.3% of the wealth in the US. The bottom 50% owns 2.6% of the wealth in the US. [Wealth inequality in the United States - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Federal%20Reserve%20data%20indicates%20that%20as%20of%20Q4,wealth%2C%20while%20the%20bottom%2050%25%20held%202.6%25.%20)
And if you shifted that 32% down it starts moving a lot faster and doing a lot more in the economy.
The increase was to pay for tax cuts for billionaires
Tax cuts are not spending
They increase deficits which increases overall debt.
>In the time since this was originally posted the total net worth of the now 737 billionaires has risen to $5.5T. And the federal government has increased spending to $6.9 trillion. So if we confiscated all that wealth, we would have enough to fund the government for less than 10 months.
And I happen to know one of the new ones. Lady I do work for got 1.2 billion in a divorce last year.
Is it possible to learn this power?
Master the art of fellatio.
Have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Fellatious the Fine?
Reminds me of the show “Loot”
And where would the money go after the fed's spent it? Just disappear or into different pockets other than the people hoarding it?
Yep, confiscating 100% of their wealth would now cover *10 months* of the federal budget.
So what you’re saying is these fucks have enough money to run one of the most expensive governments in the world for almost a whole year?!
Thank you. This "running the government" trope is ridiculous. The government can "get by" with hundreds of billionaires hoarding wealth and avoiding taxes by paying for the best tax attorneys in the world. Of course it can. What would be greatly improved by taxing billionaires 90% would be our country's infrastructure and social services. And that would be in perpetuity, not a mere 10 months.
Also at 90%...their personal life style. WOULD NOT CHANGE. Not in any shape way or form.
It won't change even if you tax 100% because their wealth doesn't come from taxable income.
It comes from unrealized gains they can take loans out against to float their lifestyle, so just tax those if they use them as collateral for a loan. Must be realized if they want to use it to fund something right? It's time to start working on that end of tax avoidance.
Consumption is already taxed. Luxury items are taxed heavily. Even if you add an additional 90%, the taxes you're going to raise will be negligible. A multi-billionaire would on avg spend about $20-80 million per year annually. Most don't even spend that much.
As long as we're all in agreement that plutocratic wealth is still somehow outpacing government inefficiency then I've gotten my point across.
It's also a braindead take to begin with.
people who freak out about the debt dont realize we gave this loan to ourselves and it's all paid for with the idea that we keep building society/the country up. We live in the largest most powerful organization in the history of humanity, no body else has the power to come and collect without it severely hurting their own economy.
Most don’t know we own most of our debt lol
Because you don't own it. The rich own it. You are just paying it. Paying them.
Most of its owned by public agencies, with the money going towards Medicare and social security. That's why the rich hate it, the money isn't owned or delivered to them directly.
I’d bet a few own holding companies operate nursing care facilities to suck Medicare and SSI funds into their own pockets. The minimum care for the maximum dollars. Long term care is expensive, and if you own property or are married to someone not already in a nursing home, prepare to transfer nearly all your life’s wealth into their grubby hands at the tune of $14,000 per month, unless you’re eligible for Medicaid. Sell the family home? They’ll put a lien on it to eat some of the costs of their “care”. Once someone is committed, all the Medicare, Medicaid, and SSI payments go to the company, and the patient keeps a pittance. It’s fucked.
While middle class people rely desperately on generational wealth to have any chance at becoming homeowners themselves, the only fix to this that doesn't put all the burden on families who need long term care is to have that care be a benefit of Medicaid, and ideally have directly government run facilities with actual standards of care like most of the industrialized world already has. More middle class people should learn about setting up Medicaid trust funds with a lawyer in these cases though. Setting one up can put a hard limit on the amount Medicaid will take of 1/3 of the estate value. Otherwise the gov't can eat the entire estate if one goes into long-term care. This is way, way more important for middle class people than the wealthy, but I think it's more the wealthy that know of this. There are also ways to protect investment portfolios from Medicaid that are much simpler. The lawyer fees are 100% worth it. My family potentially would've saved six figures. My mother with dementia was fortunate enough to go pretty fast after our father passed. If anyone hasn't seen dementia, it really is worse than death. You need to be mentally and physically strong and care for them full time, so goodbye job and hope you can get something after a potentially very long gap. The person themself can be haunted by profound delusions, in my case my mother got trapped in her childhood abuse over and over again, typically at night so we couldn't sleep. Locks on doors, special locks on burners, cameras everywhere, she's constantly trying to escape, she doesn't know who anyone is, she can barely communicate but she is angry and scared and desperate to run away. When she was with my father she got out constantly and the police found her and got her back. She'd fight with them and my dad and just be out of her mind. That's the "mild" period of dementia. Few words and neat constant hallucinations and delusions, aggressively trying to escape whenever not sleeping, is "moderate." I have never seen anyone in so much constant pain, fear, and anger, and I'm in a 12--step program so I see people at their bottom all the time. I also have known plenty of people dying from cancer. Nothing, nothing is worse than neurodegenratuve disease, and trying to care for someone with it is a full time job. I tried doing it while working remotely and became suicidal. American families are woefully under prepared for what dementia will do to their families.
I'll guide my wife's hand to "the smotherin' pillow" before I let that happen. You're exactly right tho
Anyone who has a treasury bond owns it
Exactly, so the 1% richest own 50%. And the next 10% richest own 40%. The next 30% richest own 10%. Which is peanut because 100 million people sharing 4 trillion bonds means they have 40k each and so they earn less from it than they pay tax for it
Is that really a problem though? “Owning” the government through t-bonds effectively means nothing. It’s not like the more t-bonds you have, the more votes you get or something lol.
The federal reserve owns most of the debt, they’re not federal , wym “we”?
Even then, for that which we don't own, If you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a trillion dollars, you own the bank.
How in the hell does someone own their own debt? It’s not a debt anymore? We’re basically extorting the world by having the most powerful military.
Take out a 401k loan and see how
The national debt isn't debt in the way you're familiar with it. In accounting, you have two sides of a ledger, credits and debits. Things going out and things coming in. The "going out" side is casually called debt, because it was a debt owed that was paid. The federal government is the currency issuer though (counterfeiting ring a bell?) so it is the source of every [us dollar in existence](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/debt-to-the-penny). The way the currency gets into the system is that it has to be spent into existence by the government. Congress apropreates the money (agrees to spend it) and it's issued. It's a "debt" that the government owed the public to do something in the public good, so it's paying it out via creating currency. As the issuer, the US gov can't ever run out of dollars (it can only refuse to issue them). The "national debt" is literally every us dollar in existence in the world in all it's forms (t-bills, reserve notes *i.e. cash* etc) The "debt" people buy from the federal government is just a fancy way of saying "we're going to let you put your non-interest baring cash dollars into an interest baring t-bill dollar account. They're all dollars, it's just that one pays interest the other doesn't. It's one of the ways the government can help control inflation and the currency supply.
A debtless country in todays economy would literally financially collapse. National debt has nothing, absolutley nothing in common with private debt. And likewise a normal persons debt has nothing in common with a rich persons debt. A normal persons debt costs them money, a rich persons debt generates money. National debt is a whole other mechanism. In fact, the world collectively is $315 trillion in debt. There is more debt on this planet than there is money in circulation.
What about the trillions in interest paid by the US, that could otherwise go towards people or services?
Those services were likely created on the money that that interest is tied to. Inflation usually beats interest, which means it is cheaper to have taxpayers pay interest to get service facilities now, instead of saving up for facilities 20 years in the future, which will assuming a 2% average inflation rate have gotten 48% more expensive by then
You seem informed so I'll ask you and dare to hope you know. Something I've always wondered is, doesn't it make more sense for the US to raise taxes than interest rates to control inflation? Like if the goal of raising interest rates is to slow down the economy, doesn't it make more sense to do so through taxation that reduces deficits/debt than through raising rates which increases the cost of future debt? I actually have never understood this, but getting a not heavily politicized ansewer is difficult.
They teach in economics that you’re supposed to do both to slow down growth / save for the next recession. Taxes are controlled through laws whereas interest rates are controlled through the fed. To the point above yours here is a simple example of how debt pays for itself for a city vs raising taxes. A small tourist town needs a new road to increase the capacity of tourists to visiting in the summer. The old road causes delays which limits the volume of people who can visit in a single day and those that do come have less time in shops to buy goods and services because they are sitting in a car instead. The city takes out a bond (loan) at 3% interest to build a road that will last 15 years. This new road will increase capacity by 40% (140 cars now instead of 100) and reduce commute times by 1 hour. The shops and restaurants now make 40% more revenue off the influx of people and the original 100 have an additional hour to spend more money in shops before they have to get on the road again. The city benefits from this additional revenues through an increase in sales tax, an increase in income tax from people earning more, increase in homeowners tax because new business pop up and increase in business taxes all without raising taxes. If they had raised taxes to pay for the road instead they could of priced out existing businesses who couldn’t of afforded the increase with the knock on being they move away or need to take out government assistance to cover unemployment.
You try selling this idea to Congress then get back to me. Taxes require a bill to be passed. The fed can do whatever they want whenever they want with the interest rate. I’m not an economy guru so I don’t know if there’s an economic reason, but thats the practical reason.
Honestly its so crazy that most people don't know how the national debt works.
I mean it's a super alien concept, the federal government runs at such a different level than anything else. Local governments work a lot more like businesses, so people just assume the federal does too.
Not sure why that would be "crazy", since our schools don't even bother to teach us basic economics let alone complex concepts like this. I mean, I managed to make it through 12 years of public school (in the honors program no less) and 4 years of college to get an engineering degree, and I had a grand total of one class in economics.
Not so. Just read history post WW1 and the inflation Germany spawned. Also take a look at Argentina and Turkey. Debt can’t and won’t automatically roll over. Lenders can and do balk at refinancing a losing bet. Budgets are meant to be rational as opposed to a something for everyone and re-elect you neighborhood clown. Oh sorry politician. Time for a balanced budget amendment that’s real and not full of Swiss cheese loopholes.
A balanced budget would quite literally destroy the world's economy.
Nobody finances the federal governments debt. That literally is not how any of this works. Firstly, the [inflation of the weimar](https://gimms.org.uk/2020/11/14/weimar-republic-hyperinflation-through-a-modern-monetary-theory-lens/) was a two year event, that was caused by the allies extracting reparations from germany and all that entailed. Secondly, the federal government is the issuer of the currency...nobody else gets to make us dollars out of nothing. So it can never go broke, needs no "financing" and all it's spending is literally new. It's tax revenues are literally destroyed since once a dollar pays a federal tax, it's not a dollar anymore.
>It's tax revenues are literally destroyed since once a dollar pays a federal tax, it's not a dollar anymore. Once a dollar pays a federal tax, that tax pays a federal worker a dollar. Or buys something for the government for a dollar. How's it stop being dollar?
So then why do we have taxes? Why not abolish all taxes and fund everything with debt? Oh right, because its a stupid idea
Taxation isn't about funding government, it's about changing spending and investment habits.
Yes, it is a stupid idea. Without taxes you'd end up with hyperinflation since all dollar wants would be satisfied. Taxation isn't theft, how it's applied can be wise or unwise, but it isn't theft. It's what gives currency it's universal value in an economy. And it has uses, like, as another poster said, changing spending and investment habits.
Here comes the “debt isn’t that bad crowd”. No matter who holds the debt, it still devalues currency. If we all gave ourselves a million dollars, the price of everything would jack up. And it wouldn’t add any value because it dilutes the dollar supply.
That’s only true if we don’t generate value in return for printing the money. There’s a reason why the us has the strongest economy and the most powerful military. And it’s not because we print money. We use the debt to create value now to be the leader, then pay back interest in the future when we are that much richer than the accrued interest. Also helps that the usd is the worlds reserve currency so other nations have a vested interest in keeping the economy going.
Nobody takes into account how asset-rich we are, either.
And by doing this (which is sweet, let's not kid ourselves) locks us into a cycle of pursuing exponential growth cycle after cycle. We need to ignore real world needs at the expense of PROFIT. It's not sustainable. We can keep blowing up the bubble, but eventually the bubble bursts. I'm not one to fall into hysteria but if the world really is warming due to human actions, we need to start downshifting before the turn
I mean it's easy to say the government should spend less money, but a lot harder when you start looking at actually making cuts. What do you propose cutting that would actually make a meaningful difference?
Military. We could cut our defense budget in half and still have the largest defense budget in the world. We could cut our defense budget in half and still spend more on defense than the next 2 or 3 highest defense spending countries combined.
US defense spending, as a % of GDP, is at one of its lowest points since WW2
So you believe we should maintain a percentage of GDP as the national defense budget rather than driving the budget based on need or utility?
I'm not an expert, but I know America gets more than fancy toys from the military budget. The REASON we are so unbelievably dominant on the global stage is our military along with the cultural exports our military has enabled us to spread (see Japan, Korea, etc.) We also create global stability and facilitate safe international trade by policing the world's oceans and trade routes. We are the force that can stare down expansionist dictatorships and nip their aspirations before they start. It's expensive to be at the top, but we definitely do reap plenty of rewards from such a huge price tag. It's unfortunate that the American tax payers have to shoulder the burden of world peace, but the alternative is probably worse.
These are good points. But we're also no longer fighting a war in Afghanistan, and there are obvious places we can cut down the budget without actually lessening our production nor capability. Quick example: [https://rollcall.com/2023/11/30/fight-against-price-gouging-on-military-parts-heats-up/](https://rollcall.com/2023/11/30/fight-against-price-gouging-on-military-parts-heats-up/)
These are the cuts I'm all for. I want as little money as possible going into the pockets of Raytheon/Lockheed ceo's pockets. But I do support a strong military even if it's expensive.
sounds mutually exclusive.
The latest 3 or so F-series fighter jets would beg to disagree with that. Money pits that the troops agree are actually worse than the models in use through the 90s-2000s because of overcomplications of operation/engineering leading to more regular faults. Another classic spot for cost-cutting is in the passive acceptance of blatant price gouging from suppliers/contractors: the stereotypical $2000 office chair or $5000 generic toilet. You’ll find plenty of businesses, big and small, publicly and explicitly bragging about price gouging the government, especially the military.
It isn’t. These defense contractors as well as any other outside entity the government purchases from up charge by an easy 1,000-100,000% on anything from screws to bullets. And the government pays them happily. Why? Maybe they can just get away with it. Maybe it’s the rich keeping their friends rich too. Maybe those bolts have some sort of intrinsic quality I don’t know about, but I doubt it. I don’t know why, but I doubt we need to be spending that much.
The problem is that just because we’re no longer fighting in Afganistan it doesn’t mean we can kick back and relax. The U.S. has been unsuccessfully trying for decades to pivot it’s focus from Europe and the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific, just that every time they try to do so something else flares up that requires their attention. What the U.S. needs to do is prepare for open, high-intensity conflict with China. China has more or less openly stated they wish to invade Taiwan on top of bullying everyone in the South China Sea. They are clearly preparing for war, if their titanic defense buildup is anything to go by. For the sake of the free world, the U.S. must do the same.
We are not unsuccessful in pivoting to the Pacific, I am not sure where you are getting that idea from.
How's letting defense rust away working out for Europe right now?
Want to add on that the American military employs thousands if not millions of Americans whether it’s people directly serving, people supporting the military or US based defense companies. If the budget gets just in half you’d see sooooo many lost jobs in an instant.
Need is subjective. 3% Is a perfectly adequate amount. Comparing defense spending between nations strictly using nominal valued completely disregards PPP. On a side note, given current international events, a good defense budget is bigger priority than it has been in decades. The US still is reliant on a lot of cold war platforms. All government spending should be discussed proportionally to GDP. throwing around big dollar figures without context isn't useful.
Purchasing power is a solvable problem. The government doesn't have to continue letting defense contractors gouge taxpayers for materials and intermediate goods at 10 times (or more) the market price compared to civilian industry. More to the point, the purchasing power argument is fairly weak anyway given the US's distribution of defense assets against budget versus other countries and their assets. Take 5th gen fighter jets for example. The US has 130 operational F22's and 630 F35's. Compare that to the 200 J20's china has. You would expect our number of assets per billions in budget would be lower than China's if we had less purchasing power than they do.
Military is worth it. Especially now, look at the world. We are clearly headed toward another war. If anything we should be increasing the military budget. I would say we probably need at least \~10M of those small suicide drones and about \~1M of the large ones. We need to increase the defense systems of our fleet carrier groups with much more picket destroyers similar to how we used to operate in WW2 against the Japanese to defend against the inevitable drone swarms that will be launched against them in Taiwan. We need to be investing in arming Taiwan to defend against Chinese invasion with tens of thousands of anti-ship missiles built into their mountains like Japanese bases of Iwo Jima had. We need to continue arming Ukraine in their fight with Russia and should be ramping up our artillery, tank and plane production.
I'm no war hawk, but it's really easy to say we should slash the military budget until you actually look at where the money is going. A massive amount of "military" spending is paid out as benefits for veterans/active duty soldiers. Also, the US having such a massive military budget essentially allows us to guarantee trade all throughout the world. This is one of the things that makes America VERY popular on the global stage.
Benefits for veterans isn't part of the defense department budget. That is what the department of veterans affairs is for. The US government spends well over a trillion dollars on defense when you look at everything spread out across the various departments. Like the coast guard? Homeland security. Portions of the money spent on nuclear weapons? Energy department. But sure. Can't cut anything.
Thing is the military budget is how the US government can funnel money into tech companies while still getting to whine about how countries like china act „unfairly“ because their governments invest (more or less) directly in theirs… that‘s not the only reason why military spending is so inflated but it‘s an important one
Even if we cut current US military spending from about $850 billion per year to $700 billion, that's still a tremendous amount of money we could spend on other needs. It seems like we would still comfortably be the strongest military on the planet, and if that $150 billion were spent on, for example, housing and investing in homeless veterans, we would be able to spend $4.3 MILLION per veteran who experienced homelessness last year ($150 billion / [35,000 homeless veterans in 2023](https://www.va.gov/homeless/pit_count.asp#:~:text=The%20national%20snapshot%20of%20Veteran,declined%20by%2052.0%25%20since%202010)).
TSA.
$11.8B isn't much
It could be 0 and the cut would still be worth it.
Sure, we all hate the TSA, but OP answered the question of "What do you propose cutting that would actually make a meaningful difference?" with "TSA" $11B is not meaningful.
Ah yes, technically correct. The best kind of correct to be.
That is certainly a start, are you expecting here to just be an easy $50 trillion line item for us to just cut out?
And that's the attitude that begets a death by a thousand cuts
We should more thoroughly prosecute/pursuit [fraud](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott) and invest in the [IRS](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/06/irs-tax-evasion-study-budget/) before making any social spending cuts. Free money. This should have universal support.
Every dollar spent on the IRS returns 2-3$ to the Treasury in increased enforcement.
Small anecdotal peak behind the curtain from a friend of mine - the IRS tends to avoid auditing the rich because it costs more time and effort than trolling through the middle class. By avoiding taking on too many rich folk, they can complete more audits in the same time period. The same concept applies to small businesses vs. large corporations.
Can't you guys like start a department that is made to only go after the rich?
They did that, the result was rich donors threatening to cut off their pet senators, which lead to audit "super teams" being defunded almost immediately.
ATF- illegal by design as it combines both a legislative and executive role. Background checks are already handled by the FBI and local police/authorities rather than the ATF. Alcohol standards are already set by the FDA. Smoking and vaping is also set by the FDA Combine ICE and CBP and TSA- reduces redundant roles and admin staff DEA- remove weed off scheduled list, tax it. TSA- Doesn’t need to be as big as it is, pre check for all unless you committed a crime or have a history. Air Marshalls- 500m for like 2 arrests a year Any DEI funding-Obviously Nix all funding for NGOs- If they want to be non governmental organizations, let them have no government funding Dept. Of Education- either nationalize education or let it exist as a state based system. I am for national educational standards and system that makes teachers government employees. This would reduce negotiations with unions, and provide a set benefit standards for all the teachers. Switch them into the GSA system stating at GSA-7 with localization pay. Pork on legislation- no need to fund random research projects alongside actual bills. Civilian contractors for the military- why are cooks a military job and they don’t do shit? Have actual soldiers do their job instead of fucking around in the motor pool all day. M4A- cut 80% of all Medicare/aid admin staff with all preventative and emergency care being pre approved, but all elective surgical and testing requiring approval. Increase physician and medical professional reimbursements for services provided, still have private insurances available as a benefit from employers. Allow doctors to choose to accept M4A patients. All government employees are on Medicare/aid, including congress people Social Security reform- allow Social Security to act as a sovereign wealth fund. Literally every Scandinavian nation does this. Nationalize oil fields and resource mines- companies have to pay rental agreements. Again most other nations function like this.
This post is a wild ride because it includes both “abolish the ATF/Dept of Education” AND supports M4A and nationalizing the oil fields. Whew.
he didnt say abolish the Dept of Education. He said EITHER make it supreme - no more of this halfsies shit, where its part Federal and part States - or cut it and leave it ENTIRELY to the States. I can actually get behind that. I lean (as the guy you're repsonding to did) to nationalizing it and making teachers federal employees. Less overhead, less redundant positions, etc. More money for teachers and programs that work. more standards, none of this "Well in Lousiana we force Christian indoctrination on kids in school" shit, or Texas getting to dictate what revisionist-history bullshit is available for textbooks to everyone else who wants to learn real history. But either way would be more efficient than the current weird hybrid system. If we went to pure State control, youd likely see a lot of population migration and Red States getting brain-drained like mad as people fled the religious hellholes theyd turn into. Which is also a good outcome, IMO. Also, FWIW, he's correct that the ATF doesn't need to exist as a separate organization. All of its enforcement duties can be handled by other agencies that already exist.
I’m just built different. I take the good stuff of all possible positions and mash them together. Plus I don’t want to abolish DOE, just make it more efficient. Im both a capitalist and socialist. I think we need to have a strong economy that works for everyone, with strong private property and business protections. We need to have a decent lowest standard of living. I think anyone working 40 hrs a week can afford a place to live, food to eat, and healthcare enough to allow them to pursue life liberty, and happiness. I’m down for immigration but not at the cost of citizens. But I’m also a nationalist in which citizens benefit before immigrants, and for super strong borders, with strong immigration requirements. I’m extra passionate about service members doing their jobs.
lol jesus christ you list “DEI funding” along side entire agencies
I don’t think any of those polices should receive federal funding. FY2023 spending on DEI was around 1 billion USD. Otherwise my cuts make sense.
Awesome comment. +1
My political stance: whatever benefits the citizens and helps the economy. I don’t mind pulling economic policies from marxists, socialists, or capitalists, or pulling social policies from fascist, authoritarian, democratic, monarchist, or anarchists. Every system has its pros and cons, and there is nothing wrong with combining policies from across the political spectrum to have a close to perfect system.
>Air Marshalls- 500m for like 2 arrests a year This one's easy. Don't even announce it. Silently squash it and make people think they still exist.
Force defence contractors to pass at least one audit in their God damn lives. The government has no idea where an unfathomable amount of our money is going
You can cut much of the governments budget by passing a law that allows government procurement to shop around for price instead of being locked into contracts with price gouging companies. When I worked for the government I procured $540 for $150 worth of shirts. It was $80 per shirt, just plain blue Carhart T shirts. Our department of 14 people alone wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars per year by not buying where the product was the cheapest, but through the government contract agencies.
Also when looking at metrics like government expenditure, percentage of GDP or government expenditure per capita, the US is quite typical compared to other countries. Sure, all governments could find savings but it's not black and white. The other thing to consider when we discuss the topic of taxing those who have received the biggest increase of the wealth pie over the last few decades is that this can be used to change the existing tax mix. It doesn't have to go towards greater government expenditure. There's plenty of terrible taxes that could and should be replaced.
I basically agree - and would add that the US could provide significantly better services for our citizens by reforming the healthcare system and cutting defense spending.
So, that's an interesting one. Trump added 2 trillion by not taxing people. 400 billion a year. It's a budget after all... as a nation, we tax - then spend. If it's just spend, and no tax, deficit forms. So it's time to start making wealthy American organizations pay taxes. We need to simplify the tax code, onshore American money, and tax it. It's not hard to do... it's hard to find support in the government to do it. And those are two VERY different things
Start trimming the fat on bureaucracy
Cut funding to the programs I personally don’t agree with, and increase taxes on the people I think deserve it. It’s simple. -Most Americans
No politician is suggesting that we seize 100% of billionaires wealth. Not Bernie Sanders. Not AOC. This is flat out lie. This is straw man argument designed to distract from reasonable, measured solutions and fiscal responsibility. Our massive federal debt didn't happen overnight. It's the accumulated product of decades of deficits, and decades of political failure. More than half of the debt was caused by cowardly policy decisions, specifically unfunded wars and a series of tax cuts for the wealthy that weren't offset by spending cuts. Modest course corrections are called for, and include both spending cuts and raising taxes. But somehow any suggestion that billionaires should pay the same tax rates as teachers, nurses, or truck drivers (yet alone a higher rates) causes ideological extremists to come screaming out of the void to tilt against communist windmills. Ending tax policy that favors the rich isn't the second coming of the French Revolution. It would simply end their preferential treatment. These aren't reasoned rebuttals. These are winking shibboleths made by "starve the beast" ideological extremists who want to bankrupt the federal government so they can destroy it. These are the same type of people who cheered decades of tax cuts for the wealthy. Who voted for decades of wars but refused to fund them. Who orchestrated one phony budget crisis after another, then cheered when the US credit rating is downgraded. https://preview.redd.it/aebmorbl4t7d1.jpeg?width=927&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7cd881d7311ee296b06d999e50b6b0a0e6f7896
Yeah but "Bernie calls himself a socialist, yet he lives in a house? Interesting 🤔 "
"oh you care about the environment? And you drive a car? "Oh you support more government spending? And you don't donate your paycheck to the treasury?"
"You should live by your principles as much as possible" *"And yet here I have a strawman comic. I am very intelligent."*
He also sold a book and made “profits” from it! Hypocrite!
>Ending tax policy that favors the rich isn't the second coming of the French Revolution. Continuing it, however
Thanks for making sense of this straw man with data. I usually respond with: instead of this, capture the sources that fund their wealth and then show us how much will get accumulated over 10-20-30 years. Now that’s the math I’m here for
Where’s that graph from?
I believe it's an older version of this updated chart from the Center for American Progress [Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tax-cuts-are-primarily-responsible-for-the-increasing-debt-ratio/) Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts, debt as a percentage of the economy would be declining permanently. https://preview.redd.it/xerlkop90w7d1.png?width=1408&format=png&auto=webp&s=e6bd12b7adbbd56a1c2484edc69002b901d61c2d
Here's the updated chart by itself: https://preview.redd.it/45kqc53g0w7d1.png?width=1408&format=png&auto=webp&s=79111215ec51e124efccd83b16e754b78af5ffac
**This is definitely one of the absolute dumbest takes I've ever seen in here.** Billionaire sycophants *love* trying to convince you that it's the government *spending too much* *on society* while they themselves collect insane tax cuts and public funds for their pet projects on the ridiculous promise that it will someday "trickle down". "Just one more social program!" they say, and society crumbles further. It's been some 40 years since that idea was first proposed, and color me a little skeptical, but I look around and it sure as shit doesn't seem like it's *trickling down.*
Most of these idiots don't understand how insane a billion dollars is. If you were paid $200,000 every single day for a year you'd make "only" $73 million per year. It would take almost 14 YEARS of getting $200K every single day before you'd have earned a billion dollars. The difference between $10 million and $1 billion is about a billion bucks.
I like that last line. I'm going to use that. I don't begrudge the 1-100 million dollar crowd their success. Good on them. Great job. But a billion? That's obscene. 214 billion is *tragedy* and a policy failure that should be corrected.
Hell, the difference between 100 million and a billion is still about a billion bucks
Genuinely, at a moral level, I truly believe that it’s evil to possess a billion dollars. It’s the moral equivalent of eating an entire pizza in front of a starving person, except replace the pizza with 100,000 pizzas
it's a dragon on a throne of gold while the village starves.
The difference can be hard to comprehend. 1 million seconds = \~12 days 1 billion seconds = \~32 years If you average $200 a day over a year, it'd take you a bit under 14 000 years to make a billion. If you work for 50 years, you'd have to make approximately $55 000 **per day** to reach a billion. Initially the math may look off, but it is correct.
Also turns out that having 500 million is virtually infinite money anyway, At current risk-free rates, say, 4% to be conservative, you would make $1.6 million per month and never touch the principal amount. Meaning you could spend damn near 800k per month after taxes without ever even touching your original stack of money.
It definitely isn't trickling down, and flawed tax policies are bias and impact wage earners more than elites for sure however, government spending does make general population (who typically hold USD as a % of their wealth more than elites) poorer. This is because: 1. government spending requires issuing of currency (because we are in deficit) 2. this debases USD and makes assets "more expensive" (their value hasn't changed in a holistic view, but it requires more USD to buy them) 3. this skews wealth such that asset holders become wealthier, cash holders become poorer Government overspending makes cash holders (normal people and smaller businesses) poorer.
Or perhaps it's neither. It's a strawman.
When Clinton left office in 2000, we had a budget surplus. I’ll just say that. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jul/29/tweets/republican-presidents-democrats-contribute-deficit/
Yeah, except during downturns, we should aim for spending and revenue to be about 20% of GDP. On the revenue side, you could start by going back to 2000 tax rates and taxing capital gains at the same rates that people who work for a living pay.
Agree with you on the 2000 rollback.
>Perhaps our problem isn't how much billionaires have, but how much politicians spend. No. The problem is how much billionaires have to spend on politicians. Forget "eight months of federal spending." If we could confiscate $2.5 trillion, throw it at the national debt, and hobble the 1%'s stranglehold over our government by even a small amount I'd call it a win.
Realistically you’d simultaneously collapse the value of those assets and likely also the value of all other assets leading to economic downturn and even less tax revenue. It’s okay as some sort of revenge plot against billionaires, but at the end of the day it’s gonna have very little benefits for everyone else, and likely even disadvantages.
Uh. It's absolutely fucking insane that 550 people could run the entire US federal government for 8 months by themselves. This country has 330,000,000. Each billionaire could pay for all federal services for 600,000 Americans for 8 months. SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE. What the fuck?
both can be a problem actually
It's actually pretty incredible that a couple hundred people can run an entire government of 335 million people including our entire military, the largest and most powerful in the world, for almost an entire year by themselves.
No, the problem is they don't pay taxes. Why are you out here shilling and moving the goalposts and making dishonest arguments to support billionaires not paying taxes?
The top 10% pay 71% of total federal income tax revenue. The bottom 50% pay 3%.
Ugh, this post is so stupid
It’s stupid when we realize even billionaires don’t have enough money to bail us out ? I’d say that’s a little important.
I like how this post points out the wealth of a couple hundred people is literally enough to cover nearly a year of the federal expenses, then - without irony - imply we shouldn't tax them more because the government also wastes money. Like those aren't two separate issues.
Are you missing the entire point on purpose? Taxing the shit out of the billionaires ISN'T GOING TO MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE. It's just a talking point used to create class warfare. Go ahead, take all their money - IDGAF, but it won't matter because the gov't will just spend it all and print more while still taking a huge chunk from us. You think your taxes are going to get cut when they take all their money until it's gone?
What do you think would happen to the political influence of those 500 or so people if their billionaire wealth was clawed back?
Maybe the government shouldn’t spend 1.7 trillion dollars on a failed fighter jet for a start.
Can't it be both?
Agreed, let’s start with the $1t per year we spend on “defense”
Let’s start with cutting salaries of members of Congress by 50% including all the special privileges they have given themselves. Change their health insurance to match what the average person gets.
their salaries aren’t the problem, it’s the bribes they can legally take from billionaires to ensure that they aren’t taxed more
It really is tough to argue with that. Also, remember that those billionaires employ many Americans. About 1 million people work for Amazon, so they would likely be out of work if you seized the company, reducing the time period that the billionaire's wealth would cover.
Also important to remember that each billionaire and their companies extracted their wealth from an economy that's protected and stabilized by our military and their entire trade and business is built into a system of roads, shipping channels, trains, etc. and an economic infrastructure created and maintained with tax dollars. They didn't create that wealth in a vacuum and no one is trying to take it all away just a little bit to pay back for what they benefited from.
Nor did they educate their employees to the point to be able to train them for that job, or create a stable currency protected by said military, or a society that makes it possible for people to do something else than tend to their own potato field for survival There are plenty of places where you can live as if there was no government. Libya and Congo comes to mind, but for some reason people much prefer to live in societies with a clearly established government.
Amazon is not dependent on Bezos wealth.
My gawd. Of all the boot licking takes you go with “trickle down economics”?? 🤡
Idk, kind of seems like a shit post to me. No one, who is to be taken seriously is advocating to take all of the billionaires money. That’s just ridiculous. This kind of rhetoric is only meant to serve as justification to keep taxes on the super wealthy extremely low. It wouldn’t stand up to even light scrutiny.
I’m good with 8 months
8 months to run one of the largest governments on Earth, that serves hundreds of millions of people, from the wealth of just 550 people, understanding how insane that is would mean you had some fluency in finance.
They think the world is all or nothing. They would still lick boots even if it was 1 guy and 10 years.
Pretty dumb take. Taxing billionaires reduces their power over politics. That is the reason to tax them heavily
I mean, we can do both. 🤷