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I was thinking about this recently when I filed my taxes. Maybe if they provided some kind of itemized receipt? "You paid $x in taxes. This was distributed as

I was thinking about this recently when I filed my taxes. Maybe if they provided some kind of itemized receipt? "You paid $x in taxes. This was distributed as $y to infrastructure, $z to education, $w to defense" etc.

patrickaljord 10y ago
Your tax dollar don't pay for $y, $z or $w. You pay for the national debt mostly at this point. The government overspends and gets its money either from debt or from over printing. Even if top 10 of fortune 500 paid 100% taxes, it would still not cover spending. Just saying.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Interest on the national debt is a small portion of the US budget: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... Even if you just look at discretionary spending, debt payments are not a large portion of spending. New borrowing is also larger than the interest payments.
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    There is something off with the charts on the site you refer to (they don't provide the actual numbers in the charts). Simple calculation: With $20T of debt, at 3% interest rate (30Y bond), the interest on the debt is adding 600 billion dollars to the deficit per year (and it compounds). 600 billion with respect to the 3.8 billion federal budget is almost 16%. And the interest rate is so low only because debt rates have been artificially suppressed by central banks using financial tricks such QE, the Fed buying its own's governments' debt, etc. With interest rates bound to rise sooner or later, we are sitting on a financial time bomb.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      The US pays (on average) less than 3%. The debt is also just a bit less than $19 trillion. So we save $30 billion by using the slightly smaller debt and $120 billion by using the interest rate of 2.4%. $450 billion is still a huge budget item and it is a problem that interest rates will rise.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Soaking the exceedingly rich doesn't solve the budget deficit, true. Erasing the entire debt would be a slow and expensive process that would spread much higher taxes across most or all earners. But you don't pay for the national debt, mostly. Recent payments on the national debt are around $420 billion - about 11% of the federal budget. God knows that's not small, but it's far from 'mostly', and 2/3 of the debt is even held inside the US.
lostboys67 10y ago
They do this in the UK
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  Though there is some controversy over how it is presented: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29898083 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29898083 The story contains an image of what they provide, as well as some suggestions for making it better.
theOnliest 10y ago
My local taxes (county) do this. Whenever you pay property (house, car) taxes, it tells you $x goes to the county schools, $y to roads, and so on. (Usually including something like $0.67 to the county library!) It's really nice...sure, paying tax on my car every year isn't great, but I'm happy to give $150 (or whatever it is) to the public schools.

patrickaljord 10y ago

Your tax dollar don't pay for $y, $z or $w. You pay for the national debt mostly at this point. The government overspends and gets its money either from debt or from over printing. Even if top 10 of fortune 500 paid 100% taxes, it would still not cover spending. Just saying.

maxerickson 10y ago
Interest on the national debt is a small portion of the US budget: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... Even if you just look at discretionary spending, debt payments are not a large portion of spending. New borrowing is also larger than the interest payments.
- jazzyk 10y ago
  There is something off with the charts on the site you refer to (they don't provide the actual numbers in the charts). Simple calculation: With $20T of debt, at 3% interest rate (30Y bond), the interest on the debt is adding 600 billion dollars to the deficit per year (and it compounds). 600 billion with respect to the 3.8 billion federal budget is almost 16%. And the interest rate is so low only because debt rates have been artificially suppressed by central banks using financial tricks such QE, the Fed buying its own's governments' debt, etc. With interest rates bound to rise sooner or later, we are sitting on a financial time bomb.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    The US pays (on average) less than 3%. The debt is also just a bit less than $19 trillion. So we save $30 billion by using the slightly smaller debt and $120 billion by using the interest rate of 2.4%. $450 billion is still a huge budget item and it is a problem that interest rates will rise.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Bartweiss 10y ago
Soaking the exceedingly rich doesn't solve the budget deficit, true. Erasing the entire debt would be a slow and expensive process that would spread much higher taxes across most or all earners. But you don't pay for the national debt, mostly. Recent payments on the national debt are around $420 billion - about 11% of the federal budget. God knows that's not small, but it's far from 'mostly', and 2/3 of the debt is even held inside the US.

lostboys67 10y ago

They do this in the UK

ZeroGravitas 10y ago
Though there is some controversy over how it is presented: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29898083 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29898083 The story contains an image of what they provide, as well as some suggestions for making it better.

theOnliest 10y ago

My local taxes (county) do this. Whenever you pay property (house, car) taxes, it tells you $x goes to the county schools, $y to roads, and so on. (Usually including something like $0.67 to the county library!) It's really nice...sure, paying tax on my car every year isn't great, but I'm happy to give $150 (or whatever it is) to the public schools.