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I don't understand your last sentence, why as little as possible? is it better for the country to grow ever more deeper into debt or for politicians to get fund

I don't understand your last sentence, why as little as possible? is it better for the country to grow ever more deeper into debt or for politicians to get funding for their promises by appeasing billionaires and CEOs? it is just as important to pay taxes as it is to vote. I would even say the more taxes you pay, the more invested in politics and civic responsibilities you would become. Excessive taxation is bad but I have never seen anywhere near excessive taxation in the US. The general ailments and downtrends in American society started right around the time when taxation (especially the corporate kind) started getting cut and we moved away from the gold standard for our money. For once I'd like to see a politician promise to raise taxes and use that revenue to fix things and actually win. Perverse financial incentives are ruining everything.

cscurmudgeon 2y ago
US has a lot of public spending fraud and wastage. Just a few examples 1. San Jose Failed To Adequately Track $300 Million In Homelessness Spending https://sd15.senate.ca.gov/news/mercury-news-audit-san-jose-failed-adequately-track-300-million-homelessness-spending https://sd15.senate.ca.gov/news/mercury-news-audit-san-jose-.... 2. U.N. Has Flown More Than $2.9 Billion in Cash to Afghanistan Since the Taliban Seized Power, Diverting U.S. Funds https://www.propublica.org/article/united-nations-cash-afghanistan-following-taliban-takeover https://www.propublica.org/article/united-nations-cash-afgha... 3. California put hundreds of millions of homelessness dollars at risk because of its “disorganized” and “chaotic” anti-fraud policies, according to a critical federal audit released today. https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2024/08/hud-hcd-audit/ https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2024/08/hud-hcd-... > For once I'd like to see a politician promise to raise taxes and use that revenue to fix things and actually win. Perverse financial incentives are ruining everything. No. We should vote for no more new taxes (not a single cent more) till we audit at all levels of government and find out how much fraud and waste is there and have a plan to fix it. Anything else would be illogical.
- aidenn0 2y ago
  The deficit is about 1.5T annually. You'd have to find a missing $3B 500 times per year to make that up.
  - cscurmudgeon 2y ago
    > $3B 500 times per year to make that up. You don't think that is possible? Why? https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833#:~:text=What%20GAO%20Found,risk%20environments%20during%20this%20period https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833#:~:text=What%20GA.... > GAO estimated total direct annual financial losses to the government from fraud to be between $233 billion and $521 billion, based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022. The range reflects the different risk environments during this period That is just fraud. Wastage will be probably be higher lol. It is morally wrong to pour more water into a container with holes in the middle of water shortage.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Not only that, you can separate the waste into several different categories. The first is purposeful waste. That is, a corrupt program that diverts tax dollars into the coffers of some corporation with lobbyists. This is extremely common in the DoD, for example, and identifying these has extremely high gains because the program can be deleted wholesale. Then there is simple inefficiency. The government's website is incapable of doing something it should be capable of doing and then the government has to employ an army of clerks to do it by hand. These can be pretty big gains too. If you can reduce the number of clerks by 80%, that's a lot of money. Then there is unnecessary complexity. Most of this comes directly from Congress. Somebody needs to go through all the existing laws and do a cost/benefit analysis to see which ones are still relevant and have a net positive effect, and get rid of the ones that don't. More than that, look at the laws as a whole and see if they make sense. We have a slew of programs that all have the same ostensible purpose, e.g. to provide assistance to the poor, but then they all have different applications and qualification conditions and phase outs and benefits. Combine them all into a single system that provides a cash benefit and you can eliminate a lot of bureaucracy. And for both of these, the savings isn't just to the government -- it's also to the citizens who have to interact with the government. So even though the savings in terms of tax dollars might be smaller than the other categories, the value here gets doubled because it's also a savings to the public in time and paperwork. We have to start doing these things.
- Iwan-Zotow 2y ago
  > U.N. Has Flown More Than $2.9 Billion in Cash to Afghanistan Since the Taliban Seized Power, Diverting U.S. Funds and why this is inefficient?
  - cscurmudgeon 2y ago
    That is just fraud/waste. Zero US tax payer money should go to the Taliban.
pdonis 2y ago
The GP said that income should be taxed as little as possible. That doesn't necessarily mean taxes, period, should be as little as possible. One could just tax things other than income. From an economic standpoint, it makes sense not to tax income because income is production, and taxing production reduces the incentive to produce, which is the last thing we need. If we have to tax something, it makes more economic sense to tax consumption, for example with a national sales tax. > The general ailments and downtrends in American society started right around the time when taxation (especially the corporate kind) started getting cut and we moved away from the gold standard for our money. I don't think this historical narrative is correct. First, the two things you mention did not happen at the same time; tax cuts, at least if we are talking about income taxes, more or less started with Reagan in the 1980s, but the US went off the gold standard in 1933 under FDR. (Technically the US still claimed to support converting dollars to gold internationally until 1971, but that's a relatively minor change compared to what happened in 1933.) Second, "general ailments and downtrends" is very broad and I don't think one can pin down a particular time when they started. Third, as I believe pg pointed out in one of his essays, US government tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has varied very little over decades even while tax rates have varied a lot. > Perverse financial incentives are ruining everything I don't disagree with this as a general statement, but I think the tax code is a fairly minor contributor to the perverse financial incentives as compared with the government (via the Fed) printing money. Historically, monetary debasement has always led to civilizational decline.
- curtisf 2y ago
  _Earned_ income should correspond to productivity. But unearned income enjoys a dramatically lower tax rate (the capital gains rate is lower than income rate, and capital gains are not subject to FICA/self-employment taxes)
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    The capital gains rate is lower because the way capital gains are calculated causes nominal price increases due to inflation to be counted as an increase in the value of the asset. This is a pretty dumb way to do this -- just calculate the capital gain in inflation-adjusted dollars instead -- but the current system isn't inherently to the advantage of capital gains. For long-held low-risk assets it typically goes the other way because so much of the "gain" is only on paper but gets taxed anyway. And short-term capital gains are taxed at a higher rate.
throwaway14356 2y ago
you aren't wrong but i do think an organization that large with that many customers and attention from many more should be able to make and sell useful products to the world. Simply forcing people to pay is a rather crude and unsophisticated approach. It takes a lot of men to cash in the proverbial protection money. A simple example, we have periodic checks for bicycle lights. If yours doesn't work you get a fine. If you have plastic or cash it would be a good idea if the government employee would fix your light and/or sell you a new one. You are supposed to walk while holding your bike. Everyone does that until they are around the corner. They can fix car lights too, deliver food and drive for uber. etc
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> I don't understand your last sentence, why as little as possible? It should come with a corresponding reduction in government waste. The existing government budget contains a level of inefficiency which is difficult to comprehend. The scale of it is so large it's hard to wrap your head around it. > I would even say the more taxes you pay, the more invested in politics and civic responsibilities you would become. This doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, it tends to go the other way. The people who have lives and just want to go about their business (i.e. the middle class) are taxed heavily specifically because they don't have time to get involved in politics and then are poorly represented when politicians are slicing up the pie. The super-rich, meanwhile, are highly involved and then avoid paying. > The general ailments and downtrends in American society started right around the time when taxation (especially the corporate kind) started getting cut and we moved away from the gold standard for our money. US government revenue has been stable as a percent of GDP since the end of WWII and growing over time in real dollars per capita. Taxation per capita, even adjusted for inflation, is now higher than it was during WWII. That level of taxation is... high. As to your point, multinational corporations avoid paying those taxes: Since real government revenue has been going up rather than down, guess who pays? > For once I'd like to see a politician promise to raise taxes and use that revenue to fix things and actually win. Doing this is not really possible. Between state and federal income, payroll, sales, property and other taxes, the average person in many states is already paying more than 50% of their compensation in tax. Even if all you care about is tax revenue, there comes a point at which increasing taxes lowers government revenue. If you raise total taxes from 5% to 10% and that causes the economy to contract by 10%, that's maybe not great for wage earners, but government revenue has increased by 80%. If you raise total taxes from 55% to 60% and it causes the economy to contract by 10%, even government revenue goes down because 55% of 100 is more than 60% of 90. The problem isn't that the government doesn't have enough revenue, it's that most of that money might as well be set on fire because it spends it so inefficiently. And whether you think it should instead be returned to the taxpayer or spent in some other way, the status quo is absurd and unsustainable.
somedude895 2y ago
Taxes should be as high as necessary but as low as possible. Debt should be reduced by reducing government spending, not by higher taxes. I don‘t know where you get the idea that paying taxes somehow makes you more invested in politics. Switzerland has very low taxes and yet the whole political system is based on civic involvement with all but the top political offices being done by people as a sidegig rather than a career. Meanwhile Germany is a high tax country where most people are just fed up with politics and government because politicians are so far removed from civic society.
aidenn0 2y ago
> For once I'd like to see a politician promise to raise taxes and use that revenue to fix things and actually win. Perverse financial incentives are ruining everything. The 2000 election was a debate over whether to use the budget surplus to reduce taxes or increased government spending. The "reduce taxes" side narrowly won, and then a year later the death of 3000 people provoked us into increasing spending by several hundred billion doallars per year. That doesn't completely explain the current unsustainable deficit ($1.5T or about 5% of GDP !!), but it's a good chunk of it. Of course the Bush tax cuts were largely retained under Obama with a bipartisan bill that made them permanent with no corresponding cut to spending.

cscurmudgeon 2y ago

US has a lot of public spending fraud and wastage. Just a few examples 1. San Jose Failed To Adequately Track $300 Million In Homelessness Spending https://sd15.senate.ca.gov/news/mercury-news-audit-san-jose-failed-adequately-track-300-million-homelessness-spending https://sd15.senate.ca.gov/news/mercury-news-audit-san-jose-.... 2. U.N. Has Flown More Than $2.9 Billion in Cash to Afghanistan Since the Taliban Seized Power, Diverting U.S. Funds https://www.propublica.org/article/united-nations-cash-afghanistan-following-taliban-takeover https://www.propublica.org/article/united-nations-cash-afgha... 3. California put hundreds of millions of homelessness dollars at risk because of its “disorganized” and “chaotic” anti-fraud policies, according to a critical federal audit released today. https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2024/08/hud-hcd-audit/ https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2024/08/hud-hcd-... > For once I'd like to see a politician promise to raise taxes and use that revenue to fix things and actually win. Perverse financial incentives are ruining everything. No. We should vote for no more new taxes (not a single cent more) till we audit at all levels of government and find out how much fraud and waste is there and have a plan to fix it. Anything else would be illogical.

aidenn0 2y ago
The deficit is about 1.5T annually. You'd have to find a missing $3B 500 times per year to make that up.
- cscurmudgeon 2y ago
  > $3B 500 times per year to make that up. You don't think that is possible? Why? https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833#:~:text=What%20GAO%20Found,risk%20environments%20during%20this%20period https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833#:~:text=What%20GA.... > GAO estimated total direct annual financial losses to the government from fraud to be between $233 billion and $521 billion, based on data from fiscal years 2018 through 2022. The range reflects the different risk environments during this period That is just fraud. Wastage will be probably be higher lol. It is morally wrong to pour more water into a container with holes in the middle of water shortage.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Not only that, you can separate the waste into several different categories. The first is purposeful waste. That is, a corrupt program that diverts tax dollars into the coffers of some corporation with lobbyists. This is extremely common in the DoD, for example, and identifying these has extremely high gains because the program can be deleted wholesale. Then there is simple inefficiency. The government's website is incapable of doing something it should be capable of doing and then the government has to employ an army of clerks to do it by hand. These can be pretty big gains too. If you can reduce the number of clerks by 80%, that's a lot of money. Then there is unnecessary complexity. Most of this comes directly from Congress. Somebody needs to go through all the existing laws and do a cost/benefit analysis to see which ones are still relevant and have a net positive effect, and get rid of the ones that don't. More than that, look at the laws as a whole and see if they make sense. We have a slew of programs that all have the same ostensible purpose, e.g. to provide assistance to the poor, but then they all have different applications and qualification conditions and phase outs and benefits. Combine them all into a single system that provides a cash benefit and you can eliminate a lot of bureaucracy. And for both of these, the savings isn't just to the government -- it's also to the citizens who have to interact with the government. So even though the savings in terms of tax dollars might be smaller than the other categories, the value here gets doubled because it's also a savings to the public in time and paperwork. We have to start doing these things.
Iwan-Zotow 2y ago
> U.N. Has Flown More Than $2.9 Billion in Cash to Afghanistan Since the Taliban Seized Power, Diverting U.S. Funds and why this is inefficient?
- cscurmudgeon 2y ago
  That is just fraud/waste. Zero US tax payer money should go to the Taliban.

pdonis 2y ago

The GP said that income should be taxed as little as possible. That doesn't necessarily mean taxes, period, should be as little as possible. One could just tax things other than income. From an economic standpoint, it makes sense not to tax income because income is production, and taxing production reduces the incentive to produce, which is the last thing we need. If we have to tax something, it makes more economic sense to tax consumption, for example with a national sales tax. > The general ailments and downtrends in American society started right around the time when taxation (especially the corporate kind) started getting cut and we moved away from the gold standard for our money. I don't think this historical narrative is correct. First, the two things you mention did not happen at the same time; tax cuts, at least if we are talking about income taxes, more or less started with Reagan in the 1980s, but the US went off the gold standard in 1933 under FDR. (Technically the US still claimed to support converting dollars to gold internationally until 1971, but that's a relatively minor change compared to what happened in 1933.) Second, "general ailments and downtrends" is very broad and I don't think one can pin down a particular time when they started. Third, as I believe pg pointed out in one of his essays, US government tax revenue as a percentage of GDP has varied very little over decades even while tax rates have varied a lot. > Perverse financial incentives are ruining everything I don't disagree with this as a general statement, but I think the tax code is a fairly minor contributor to the perverse financial incentives as compared with the government (via the Fed) printing money. Historically, monetary debasement has always led to civilizational decline.

curtisf 2y ago
_Earned_ income should correspond to productivity. But unearned income enjoys a dramatically lower tax rate (the capital gains rate is lower than income rate, and capital gains are not subject to FICA/self-employment taxes)
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  The capital gains rate is lower because the way capital gains are calculated causes nominal price increases due to inflation to be counted as an increase in the value of the asset. This is a pretty dumb way to do this -- just calculate the capital gain in inflation-adjusted dollars instead -- but the current system isn't inherently to the advantage of capital gains. For long-held low-risk assets it typically goes the other way because so much of the "gain" is only on paper but gets taxed anyway. And short-term capital gains are taxed at a higher rate.

throwaway14356 2y ago

you aren't wrong but i do think an organization that large with that many customers and attention from many more should be able to make and sell useful products to the world. Simply forcing people to pay is a rather crude and unsophisticated approach. It takes a lot of men to cash in the proverbial protection money. A simple example, we have periodic checks for bicycle lights. If yours doesn't work you get a fine. If you have plastic or cash it would be a good idea if the government employee would fix your light and/or sell you a new one. You are supposed to walk while holding your bike. Everyone does that until they are around the corner. They can fix car lights too, deliver food and drive for uber. etc

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> I don't understand your last sentence, why as little as possible? It should come with a corresponding reduction in government waste. The existing government budget contains a level of inefficiency which is difficult to comprehend. The scale of it is so large it's hard to wrap your head around it. > I would even say the more taxes you pay, the more invested in politics and civic responsibilities you would become. This doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, it tends to go the other way. The people who have lives and just want to go about their business (i.e. the middle class) are taxed heavily specifically because they don't have time to get involved in politics and then are poorly represented when politicians are slicing up the pie. The super-rich, meanwhile, are highly involved and then avoid paying. > The general ailments and downtrends in American society started right around the time when taxation (especially the corporate kind) started getting cut and we moved away from the gold standard for our money. US government revenue has been stable as a percent of GDP since the end of WWII and growing over time in real dollars per capita. Taxation per capita, even adjusted for inflation, is now higher than it was during WWII. That level of taxation is... high. As to your point, multinational corporations avoid paying those taxes: Since real government revenue has been going up rather than down, guess who pays? > For once I'd like to see a politician promise to raise taxes and use that revenue to fix things and actually win. Doing this is not really possible. Between state and federal income, payroll, sales, property and other taxes, the average person in many states is already paying more than 50% of their compensation in tax. Even if all you care about is tax revenue, there comes a point at which increasing taxes lowers government revenue. If you raise total taxes from 5% to 10% and that causes the economy to contract by 10%, that's maybe not great for wage earners, but government revenue has increased by 80%. If you raise total taxes from 55% to 60% and it causes the economy to contract by 10%, even government revenue goes down because 55% of 100 is more than 60% of 90. The problem isn't that the government doesn't have enough revenue, it's that most of that money might as well be set on fire because it spends it so inefficiently. And whether you think it should instead be returned to the taxpayer or spent in some other way, the status quo is absurd and unsustainable.

somedude895 2y ago

Taxes should be as high as necessary but as low as possible. Debt should be reduced by reducing government spending, not by higher taxes. I don‘t know where you get the idea that paying taxes somehow makes you more invested in politics. Switzerland has very low taxes and yet the whole political system is based on civic involvement with all but the top political offices being done by people as a sidegig rather than a career. Meanwhile Germany is a high tax country where most people are just fed up with politics and government because politicians are so far removed from civic society.

aidenn0 2y ago

> For once I'd like to see a politician promise to raise taxes and use that revenue to fix things and actually win. Perverse financial incentives are ruining everything. The 2000 election was a debate over whether to use the budget surplus to reduce taxes or increased government spending. The "reduce taxes" side narrowly won, and then a year later the death of 3000 people provoked us into increasing spending by several hundred billion doallars per year. That doesn't completely explain the current unsustainable deficit ($1.5T or about 5% of GDP !!), but it's a good chunk of it. Of course the Bush tax cuts were largely retained under Obama with a bipartisan bill that made them permanent with no corresponding cut to spending.