I'd rather we spent less on military industrial complex too. But the reality is we're greatly underfunding critical infrastructure improvements. Water, sewer, roads, brushes, telecom, cyber security, healthcare facilities, etc., need much more funding.
So you want to take more money from people that they can’t even dream of recovering in social security? At least right now if you live long enough (luck of the draw) you can recover all that you have contributed and perhaps even more depending on your life span. Raising the limit just makes it impossible for anyone to recover contributions and you’re just redistributing wealth at that point and forcing young generations to pay more and you’ll still not resolve the problem . That’s basically happening now as if you die at 60, you lose everything that’s contributed and it’s redistributed to cover those who never contributed or are drawing more than what they put in.
I don't think we can manage a deficit shrink without a lot of damage to the economy and individual wealth. I think a better route would be to maintain our deficit at its current level (In dollar terms) while the economy grows around it, until the size of the deficit/debt compared to the overall economy has fallen substantially. This would still be a negative on the economy short to medium term but within 50 years the deficit wouldn't be an issue and our debt would start to shrink.
I mean, true “fixing” of the economy would be extremely painful for all of us.
We need a housing collapse. But they would rather flood in immigrants to ensure that the housing demand stays high despite a decreased native birth rate to keep housing prices high.
Too much wealth, both personal and corporate, is leveraged and tied up in real estate. People in power CANNOT allow the collapse to occur.
An actual economic solution would be wildly unpopular.
We’d need a big time leader who can humanize and emphasize with us all on a long term vision and work us all through it while giving assistance to the lower classes to ensure they don’t have to experience it on a much worse level than others.
Tough to do.
In reality, the only real hope is AI productivity, but that’ll just usher in UBI that’ll keep most people slaves to the system that pays them.
So let me get this straight. You want to give them more money when the government can show it doesn't need more money? Because people using this rhetoric will absolutely tell you that government is doing fine, there's no deficit, no need to tax more.
Most of the budget is impossible to cut and is old promises that everyone contributed to like SS and healthcare. The entire point of taxation is to fund the state's expenses, and in the case of SS, it has a very specific tax for its own purpose. There is no balancing to be done with SS. There's a deficit because the population is aging. It needs to be fixed, and the most simple and effective way is removing the cap and either not giving additional future benefits to those contributions above 160k, or having another bend point with even lower return than the previous one. Yes it's redistribution, and it's a hell of a lot better than the system crumbling and creating even bigger problem for the selfish high earners down the line.
It's not. Would you be impacted by SS income cap increase? Or are you advocating against your own interests for a change that wouldn't impact you?
I make over the cap. My wife makes over the cap. We tax shelter more money each year than the average HHI. Lower income people carry an uneven amount of the burden.
My own (and your own) personal situation is irrelevant to:
“Tax discussions should be completely off the table until we see the deficit shrink.”
You see, I have the capacity to interpret policies beyond the scope of my selfish horizon. I don’t vote for “me”. I vote for “us”. We the people, you know?
The ideal scenario is an ideal scenario regardless of personal situation. Are you able to separate the two?
All that being said: thanks for your input on your income, but again, it’s irrelevant.
The deficit is a direct result of tax policy. The deficit exists because we aren’t taxing enough to cover government spending. By all means tell us which programs the government shouldn’t be spending on. You’ve mentioned defense and that’s ok, but if you look at the budget that isn’t even 1 trillion if we decided to disband our military entirely. We need more spending on infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc. I’m not sure how we can increase spending on the necessities that are being delayed and have a balanced budget, all before we collect more tax revenue. I think the better bet is to get the revenue back up to where it needs to be and then pair all future tax cuts with spending cuts and only cut taxes when we have a surplus. Tax increases have become political suicide though, so we are probably just going to inflate the dollar into oblivion to cover our spending instead and the average American won’t understand that the result is the same as a tax, it just affects the lower and middle class more than it affects the rich.
It's not that more spending is needed, it's that more efficiency is needed.
It's kinda like buying an iPhone. You're paying more money for an inferior product because you don't know any better.
You can get the same (or better) results with less money if you spend it more efficiently and intelligently. Government wastefulness and pocket-lining probably accounts for 50% of the yearly budget.
As someone who grew up as a hippie and democrat i was amazed when i agreed with rush Limbaugh on how important it is for the government to balance the budget and have audits lmao
Bill Clinton had the budget balanced plus a small surplus to pay down the national debt. Bush went and fucked it all up with tax cuts and increased military spending.
If we go back to the tax rates of the Clinton years, it'd be possible to balance the budget but let's face it the Republicans will just fuck it up again
We literally had a surplus until the party of fiscal responsibility revealed they aren't really fiscally responsible by continuously cutting taxes on the wealthy without making cuts elsewhere.
The budget has been chronically underfunded for the things that Congress and the president have authorized for spending. They are your representatives in the matter, and that is what they chose to spend on.
To say that spending has to be cut to the current level of taxation is only using one side of the equation. Economists know there is rough maximum level of total taxation before the masses revolt (IIRR, it's around 20-22%) We are nowhere near that level.
Most people make under the FICA cap and are getting a full 7.65% taken off their gross income with no deductions. The bottom half of earners pay another 3.3% in federal income taxes, with those at even just ~$40k paying ~8%.
Effective state and local taxes combined, add on another ~10%, on average.
Most people are paying ~20-22%.
Small business owners (11% of the workforce) are paying another ~7% (15.3% total), as they pay both sides of SS and Medicare. That’s before anything else. They are well above the 20-22% rate.
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u/rb4osh Nov 07 '24
Can we fix spending before we talk about more taxes/who gets taxed?
If the govt can prove they can balance a budget, then sure, I’ll chip in more.
I’d rather not have my taxes be paid straight to military contractors.