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Democrats generally want to raise taxes to match spending. Democrats are “tax and spend,” Republicans are just “spend.”

stouset 7y ago
I’ve said this a million times. I have no idea how the Republicans have managed to brand themselves as the fiscally-responsible party.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  Voters have been trained to listen to soundbites and not look into the real facts. Most news media has perpetuated this. Instead of reporting facts they talking heads yell at each other for hours.
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    > talking heads yell at each other for hours. Which is no different than talking heads yelling at the audience through a display and speaker, it's only through mental gymnastics that a degree of separation is established. Propaganda.
- snarf21 7y ago
  If anyone thinks ANY political party can have all the answers, they aren't using their brain. In addition, our structure today is about keeping the fights as an us vs them, while the corporations steal our lunch while we are distracted. It reminds me of a quote from the movie "The Usual Suspects", 'The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.'
  - stouset 7y ago
    I'm not sure how anything I said can even remotely be construed as implying that any political party can have all the answers, seeing as it was little more than a criticism of one policy area of one political party.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  This article goes into a great breakdown of budget deficits by those in power, and it shows that Republicans are better at controlling spending. https://extranewsfeed.com/who-is-better-at-controlling-deficits-republicans-or-democrats-af24c0fd00b0 https://extranewsfeed.com/who-is-better-at-controlling-defic...
  - mikeash 7y ago
    It looks at average deficits, which is silly. If X blows up the deficit and then Y gradually shrinks it, Y has a higher average even though Y reduced the problem and X caused it all. And of course this is not a hypothetical at all. Bush and Obama followed this pattern perfectly. Bush’s average deficit was $443 billion. Obama’s was $816 billion. But Bush inherited a surplus, and left office with a deficit of $1.4 trillion. Obama inherited that and left office with a deficit of $665 billion. Am I really supposed to conclude that Bush was better at controlling spending?
- bluGill 7y ago
  There are a lot of the grassroots Republicans who care and are frustrated by the behavior of their leaders. As you get to state and local levels Republicans tend to be more responsible to the ideals as well. With a couple notable exceptions Republicans at the federal level are as described: lower taxes and spend spend spend. The majority of voters don't care: they want low taxes and high spending on their pork project and they don't really care about the consequences.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 7y ago
Democrats don’t want to raise taxes to match spending. They don’t because they can’t. Between free college and free healthcare, you’re talking about closing the gap between what our welfare state provides and what say Germany provides. What does it cost Germany to provide its welfare state compared to our’s? About 10% more of GDP in taxes. That’s $2 trillion a year for the US. You can’t raise an additional $2 trillion a year with a 70% tax rate on millionaires or eliminating the inheritance tax or treating capital gains like income or cutting the military budget. None of that even gets you close. $2 trillion is the entire income of the top 1%, or all the profits earned by US corporations. (Because of dividends and whatnot, a lot of corporate profits are income to the top 1% so there is a huge overlap between those. And you’re already taxing those two groups almost $800 billion a year. You’d have to raise it to $2.8 trillion a year.) The total income of people making above $1 million (much less the $10 million mark AOC has cited) is $700 billion. You couldn't even raise that money with an "all of the above" approach. Say you doubled the income tax on the top 1% (+500 billion), eliminated the preferential tax treatment for capital gains (+$130 billion), doubled corporate taxes (+$200 billion), and slashed the defense budget to the NATO target of 2% of GDP (+200 billion). You're still only at $1 trillion (barely enough to close the deficit). You've also pushed the U.S. income and corporate tax burden far above the level in our competitor countries like the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain: https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-personal-income.htm#indicator-chart; https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-personal-income.htm#indicat... https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-corporate-profits.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-corporate-profits.htm#indic.... There are a few ways to get $2 trillion. You could raise income taxes from 10% of GDP, about the OECD average, to 20% of GDP. That would blow past Sweden levels of income taxes (13% of GDP) into Denmark territory. Like Denmark, you’d have to make the income tax extremely broad based. The top tax rate of 56% (combined municipal, national, and labor contribution) kicks in at under $80,000. The tax rate below that is essentially flat, at 40%, with some deductions. (Fun fact: Denmark’s corporate tax rate is just 25%, lower than the US average after accounting for state corporate taxes.) Or, you could create a 20% VAT to get our consumption taxes up from 4.3% to the OECD average of about 10%: https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-goods-and-services.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-goods-and-services.htm#indi.... And you could increase FICA taxes to 25% or so (from 15%) to get our 6.3% social insurance tax rate up to the OECD average of 9%. That, plus a millionaire's tax, if you're so inclined, will get you to $2 trillion. All of these would impose a large tax increase in the middle class. That’s politically untenable even for Democrats. That’s why you see things like the Sanders health plan, that has like a half-page bullet point list of possible revenue sources (none of which comes close to raising 10% of GDP in tax revenue). There is only a single way to increase U.S. taxes to European levels without rendering ourselves economically noncompetitive by taxing high earners and corporations more than Europe. And that is massive tax increases on the middle class. Democrats are willfully blind to that reality.

I’ve said this a million times. I have no idea how the Republicans have managed to brand themselves as the fiscally-responsible party.

maxxxxx 7y ago
Voters have been trained to listen to soundbites and not look into the real facts. Most news media has perpetuated this. Instead of reporting facts they talking heads yell at each other for hours.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  > talking heads yell at each other for hours. Which is no different than talking heads yelling at the audience through a display and speaker, it's only through mental gymnastics that a degree of separation is established. Propaganda.
snarf21 7y ago
If anyone thinks ANY political party can have all the answers, they aren't using their brain. In addition, our structure today is about keeping the fights as an us vs them, while the corporations steal our lunch while we are distracted. It reminds me of a quote from the movie "The Usual Suspects", 'The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.'
- stouset 7y ago
  I'm not sure how anything I said can even remotely be construed as implying that any political party can have all the answers, seeing as it was little more than a criticism of one policy area of one political party.
s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
This article goes into a great breakdown of budget deficits by those in power, and it shows that Republicans are better at controlling spending. https://extranewsfeed.com/who-is-better-at-controlling-deficits-republicans-or-democrats-af24c0fd00b0 https://extranewsfeed.com/who-is-better-at-controlling-defic...
- mikeash 7y ago
  It looks at average deficits, which is silly. If X blows up the deficit and then Y gradually shrinks it, Y has a higher average even though Y reduced the problem and X caused it all. And of course this is not a hypothetical at all. Bush and Obama followed this pattern perfectly. Bush’s average deficit was $443 billion. Obama’s was $816 billion. But Bush inherited a surplus, and left office with a deficit of $1.4 trillion. Obama inherited that and left office with a deficit of $665 billion. Am I really supposed to conclude that Bush was better at controlling spending?
bluGill 7y ago
There are a lot of the grassroots Republicans who care and are frustrated by the behavior of their leaders. As you get to state and local levels Republicans tend to be more responsible to the ideals as well. With a couple notable exceptions Republicans at the federal level are as described: lower taxes and spend spend spend. The majority of voters don't care: they want low taxes and high spending on their pork project and they don't really care about the consequences.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 7y ago

Democrats don’t want to raise taxes to match spending. They don’t because they can’t. Between free college and free healthcare, you’re talking about closing the gap between what our welfare state provides and what say Germany provides. What does it cost Germany to provide its welfare state compared to our’s? About 10% more of GDP in taxes. That’s $2 trillion a year for the US. You can’t raise an additional $2 trillion a year with a 70% tax rate on millionaires or eliminating the inheritance tax or treating capital gains like income or cutting the military budget. None of that even gets you close. $2 trillion is the entire income of the top 1%, or all the profits earned by US corporations. (Because of dividends and whatnot, a lot of corporate profits are income to the top 1% so there is a huge overlap between those. And you’re already taxing those two groups almost $800 billion a year. You’d have to raise it to $2.8 trillion a year.) The total income of people making above $1 million (much less the $10 million mark AOC has cited) is $700 billion. You couldn't even raise that money with an "all of the above" approach. Say you doubled the income tax on the top 1% (+500 billion), eliminated the preferential tax treatment for capital gains (+$130 billion), doubled corporate taxes (+$200 billion), and slashed the defense budget to the NATO target of 2% of GDP (+200 billion). You're still only at $1 trillion (barely enough to close the deficit). You've also pushed the U.S. income and corporate tax burden far above the level in our competitor countries like the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain: https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-personal-income.htm#indicator-chart; https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-personal-income.htm#indicat... https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-corporate-profits.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-corporate-profits.htm#indic.... There are a few ways to get $2 trillion. You could raise income taxes from 10% of GDP, about the OECD average, to 20% of GDP. That would blow past Sweden levels of income taxes (13% of GDP) into Denmark territory. Like Denmark, you’d have to make the income tax extremely broad based. The top tax rate of 56% (combined municipal, national, and labor contribution) kicks in at under $80,000. The tax rate below that is essentially flat, at 40%, with some deductions. (Fun fact: Denmark’s corporate tax rate is just 25%, lower than the US average after accounting for state corporate taxes.) Or, you could create a 20% VAT to get our consumption taxes up from 4.3% to the OECD average of about 10%: https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-goods-and-services.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-on-goods-and-services.htm#indi.... And you could increase FICA taxes to 25% or so (from 15%) to get our 6.3% social insurance tax rate up to the OECD average of 9%. That, plus a millionaire's tax, if you're so inclined, will get you to $2 trillion. All of these would impose a large tax increase in the middle class. That’s politically untenable even for Democrats. That’s why you see things like the Sanders health plan, that has like a half-page bullet point list of possible revenue sources (none of which comes close to raising 10% of GDP in tax revenue). There is only a single way to increase U.S. taxes to European levels without rendering ourselves economically noncompetitive by taxing high earners and corporations more than Europe. And that is massive tax increases on the middle class. Democrats are willfully blind to that reality.