6 ms·

This seems long overdue. The US owes ~$260,000 per taxpayer and is still regularly running trillion-dollar deficits. Our elites care more about retaining power

This seems long overdue. The US owes ~$260,000 per taxpayer and is still regularly running trillion-dollar deficits. Our elites care more about retaining power than about solving this problem, as evidenced by the fact that we have a spendy party who refuses to raise taxes on the middle class and a (self-described) thrifty party who refuses to make meaningful cuts to spending. There is zero chance that this debt gets paid off without massive inflation. Zero.

thfuran 3y ago
There's zero chance that it gets paid off period. Why bother to zero out the debt?
- marcusverus 3y ago
  Why have a long-term debt target other than zero? Debt is expensive. We'll spend 7 Trillion dollars servicing this debt over the next decade. The only argument in favor of this is that the debt spending was an "investment" which is paying off, but it's hard to believe that's true about any of this spending, with the only exception being the Keynesian stimulus spending. But even Keynes thought the stimulus debt should be paid off in due course.
Eisenstein 3y ago
> There is zero chance that this debt gets paid off without massive inflation. Zero. I mean, yeah. It means either means that the government has done some shenanigans to get it there, devaluing the money supply, or our credit is so worthless that no one will even buy government bonds or do any work without up front payment. There is a difference between having zero debt (which is not necessary nor a good idea) and balancing the budget while having a surplus (more money in than going out), which happened under Clinton and was squandered by Bush Jr. It is possible to get there again with the right economy and a President and Congress that isn't starting endless wars or passing more tax cuts or dealing with a bank caused or a pandemic caused financial crisis.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  > It is possible to get there again with the right economy and a President and Congress that isn't starting endless wars or passing more tax cuts or dealing with a bank caused or a pandemic caused financial crisis. We don't necessarily need to prevent tax cuts so long as spending cuts outpace them. The US tax rate is already absolutely absurd. I don't keep one cent I earn until Easter on an annualized basis. All we need to do is radically cut federal (and hopefully state) spending.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Cool. Either cut the military budget or reform medicare. I think the best way to save money is probably to pass a constitutional amendment for death with dignity and allow old people to place irrevocable 'when I can't decide for myself anymore off me' status on their medical directives and shield providers who abide by it from lawsuits by the family. Not only do we torture people with continued medical treatments way past the ability for the patient to regain any quality of life because of fear of lawsuits and the family being unable to let go, but we do it blatantly disregarding explicit directives from the patient and we do it at a substantial cost. I am terrified of this happening to me and everyone should be if they think about it, but people are afraid to think about or discuss end of life decisions. There is also a sizable religious movement which opposes letting people make their own choice about this. But that is never going to happen so let's keep spending trillions of dollars keeping old people alive against their will and cutting taxes for people who don't need it. Most middle class families would benefit more from massively subsidized tuition to secondary educational institutes or loan forgiveness than the tax cuts which would pass. We could also fund the IRS more so they can actually go after people who avoid taxes with convoluted schemes and attorneys because right now they don't bother and rely on taking most of the income from the middle class who pay the most and don't fight back.
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      Your argument boils down to: 1. Cut military spending Fine by me. That's an easy spending reduction. 2. Reduce end of life medical spending In a public sense, sure. But I see no reason to force privately insured or paying patients to die prematurely if it's against their wishes. > and allow old people to place irrevocable 'when I can't decide for myself anymore off me' status on their medical directives We already have legal basis for this; no constitutional amendment required. They are called Advance Directives, and a lawyer can help set it up. You get to describe in detail your wishes for care and nominate someone to execute them on your behalf. 3. Tax more This needs to happen across the board now that we've firmly extended ourselves beyond our means. It should never have been allowed to get so bad. > and cutting taxes for people who don't need it > rely on taking most of the income from the middle class who pay the most and don't fight back Higher income earners will always pay more under the current schedule, but I see no reason to steal all of their money. > Most middle class families would benefit more from massively subsidized tuition to secondary educational institutes or loan forgiveness than the tax cuts which would pass We're trying to save money. This talks about spending more by providing education. Thankfully it is unconstitutional for the federal gov to provide education (not that it is currently stopping them). Additionally, loan forgiveness is massively biased towards the wealthy. Only folks that thought a college degree had more reward than risk pursued them, and forgiving loans only helps those that delay repaying their debt or cannot afford to do so. The real way to fix education expenses is to remove gov guaranteed loans and push them back to the private sector. Only then will costs come down as students will not be able to get a loan if there is no reasonable chance of repayment. > We could also fund the IRS more so they can actually go after people who avoid taxes with convoluted schemes and attorneys If you want to change laws, this is where your focus should be. If it's legal to reduce one's tax burden, then one should. I would argue it's their duty as a taxpayer to do so. Anyone is welcome to donate extra to the IRS. They'll never turn you down.
jjeaff 3y ago
I'm not sure I understand which party is which in your description. We have two spendy parties. One who claims to want to cut spending, but refuses to raise taxes. And another that will raise taxes to cover their spending, but mostly only for certain types of wealthy people.
gamblor956 3y ago
Most of the U.S. debt is owed to domestic creditors (about 70% as of this July), and of that 40% is held by the Federal Reserve (for 28% of total debt). (These numbers don't include benefits-related debt like Social Security funding.)
- marcusverus 3y ago
  Is this fact--that the government has to print money to buy its own debt--an argument in favor of debt spending? Do you imagine that this is a free lunch?
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
We are at $96/person, where did $260k come from?
- stevedewald 3y ago
  $32.6T national debt as of August 2023 / population of 333M in most recent census = $98K/person [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_S...
- marcusverus 3y ago
  > The US owes ~$260,000 per taxpayer The word ‘taxpayer’ refers to a different set of humans than the word ‘people’ does. Not all people are taxpayers. The point of breaking down taxes into a per-person metric is to understand how much each person will need to pay in net taxes in order to retire the debt. Why would you include people who are not net taxpayers?
tengbretson 3y ago
> There is zero chance that this debt gets paid off without massive inflation. Zero. Paying off this debt would be deflationary.
- hellojesus 3y ago
  Maybe. If the US taxed ita citizens to pay the debt without printing, it would be quite deflationary. Consumer spending power would crumble and so would general demand. However the US doesn't seem to have the appetite for taxation and is instead printing new money to pay its debt. That is inflationary by definition: they are litetally inflating the money supply. This is what I see as the more likely case.
  - tengbretson 3y ago
    The addition to the money supply that debt represents has presumably already happened, so wiping it out with newly minted dollars should have a neutral effect. In practice, though, I suppose this would immediately be followed by a spending spree of new debt, like a boomer that just paid off their seadoo, so on the whole I suppose youre probably right.

thfuran 3y ago

There's zero chance that it gets paid off period. Why bother to zero out the debt?

marcusverus 3y ago
Why have a long-term debt target other than zero? Debt is expensive. We'll spend 7 Trillion dollars servicing this debt over the next decade. The only argument in favor of this is that the debt spending was an "investment" which is paying off, but it's hard to believe that's true about any of this spending, with the only exception being the Keynesian stimulus spending. But even Keynes thought the stimulus debt should be paid off in due course.

Eisenstein 3y ago

> There is zero chance that this debt gets paid off without massive inflation. Zero. I mean, yeah. It means either means that the government has done some shenanigans to get it there, devaluing the money supply, or our credit is so worthless that no one will even buy government bonds or do any work without up front payment. There is a difference between having zero debt (which is not necessary nor a good idea) and balancing the budget while having a surplus (more money in than going out), which happened under Clinton and was squandered by Bush Jr. It is possible to get there again with the right economy and a President and Congress that isn't starting endless wars or passing more tax cuts or dealing with a bank caused or a pandemic caused financial crisis.

hellojesus 3y ago
> It is possible to get there again with the right economy and a President and Congress that isn't starting endless wars or passing more tax cuts or dealing with a bank caused or a pandemic caused financial crisis. We don't necessarily need to prevent tax cuts so long as spending cuts outpace them. The US tax rate is already absolutely absurd. I don't keep one cent I earn until Easter on an annualized basis. All we need to do is radically cut federal (and hopefully state) spending.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  Cool. Either cut the military budget or reform medicare. I think the best way to save money is probably to pass a constitutional amendment for death with dignity and allow old people to place irrevocable 'when I can't decide for myself anymore off me' status on their medical directives and shield providers who abide by it from lawsuits by the family. Not only do we torture people with continued medical treatments way past the ability for the patient to regain any quality of life because of fear of lawsuits and the family being unable to let go, but we do it blatantly disregarding explicit directives from the patient and we do it at a substantial cost. I am terrified of this happening to me and everyone should be if they think about it, but people are afraid to think about or discuss end of life decisions. There is also a sizable religious movement which opposes letting people make their own choice about this. But that is never going to happen so let's keep spending trillions of dollars keeping old people alive against their will and cutting taxes for people who don't need it. Most middle class families would benefit more from massively subsidized tuition to secondary educational institutes or loan forgiveness than the tax cuts which would pass. We could also fund the IRS more so they can actually go after people who avoid taxes with convoluted schemes and attorneys because right now they don't bother and rely on taking most of the income from the middle class who pay the most and don't fight back.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    Your argument boils down to: 1. Cut military spending Fine by me. That's an easy spending reduction. 2. Reduce end of life medical spending In a public sense, sure. But I see no reason to force privately insured or paying patients to die prematurely if it's against their wishes. > and allow old people to place irrevocable 'when I can't decide for myself anymore off me' status on their medical directives We already have legal basis for this; no constitutional amendment required. They are called Advance Directives, and a lawyer can help set it up. You get to describe in detail your wishes for care and nominate someone to execute them on your behalf. 3. Tax more This needs to happen across the board now that we've firmly extended ourselves beyond our means. It should never have been allowed to get so bad. > and cutting taxes for people who don't need it > rely on taking most of the income from the middle class who pay the most and don't fight back Higher income earners will always pay more under the current schedule, but I see no reason to steal all of their money. > Most middle class families would benefit more from massively subsidized tuition to secondary educational institutes or loan forgiveness than the tax cuts which would pass We're trying to save money. This talks about spending more by providing education. Thankfully it is unconstitutional for the federal gov to provide education (not that it is currently stopping them). Additionally, loan forgiveness is massively biased towards the wealthy. Only folks that thought a college degree had more reward than risk pursued them, and forgiving loans only helps those that delay repaying their debt or cannot afford to do so. The real way to fix education expenses is to remove gov guaranteed loans and push them back to the private sector. Only then will costs come down as students will not be able to get a loan if there is no reasonable chance of repayment. > We could also fund the IRS more so they can actually go after people who avoid taxes with convoluted schemes and attorneys If you want to change laws, this is where your focus should be. If it's legal to reduce one's tax burden, then one should. I would argue it's their duty as a taxpayer to do so. Anyone is welcome to donate extra to the IRS. They'll never turn you down.

jjeaff 3y ago

I'm not sure I understand which party is which in your description. We have two spendy parties. One who claims to want to cut spending, but refuses to raise taxes. And another that will raise taxes to cover their spending, but mostly only for certain types of wealthy people.

gamblor956 3y ago

Most of the U.S. debt is owed to domestic creditors (about 70% as of this July), and of that 40% is held by the Federal Reserve (for 28% of total debt). (These numbers don't include benefits-related debt like Social Security funding.)

marcusverus 3y ago
Is this fact--that the government has to print money to buy its own debt--an argument in favor of debt spending? Do you imagine that this is a free lunch?

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

We are at $96/person, where did $260k come from?

stevedewald 3y ago
$32.6T national debt as of August 2023 / population of 333M in most recent census = $98K/person [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_S...
marcusverus 3y ago
> The US owes ~$260,000 per taxpayer The word ‘taxpayer’ refers to a different set of humans than the word ‘people’ does. Not all people are taxpayers. The point of breaking down taxes into a per-person metric is to understand how much each person will need to pay in net taxes in order to retire the debt. Why would you include people who are not net taxpayers?

tengbretson 3y ago

> There is zero chance that this debt gets paid off without massive inflation. Zero. Paying off this debt would be deflationary.

hellojesus 3y ago
Maybe. If the US taxed ita citizens to pay the debt without printing, it would be quite deflationary. Consumer spending power would crumble and so would general demand. However the US doesn't seem to have the appetite for taxation and is instead printing new money to pay its debt. That is inflationary by definition: they are litetally inflating the money supply. This is what I see as the more likely case.
- tengbretson 3y ago
  The addition to the money supply that debt represents has presumably already happened, so wiping it out with newly minted dollars should have a neutral effect. In practice, though, I suppose this would immediately be followed by a spending spree of new debt, like a boomer that just paid off their seadoo, so on the whole I suppose youre probably right.