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Highly recommend anyone who cares about this to do the CRFB’s Debt Fixer: https://www.crfb.org/debtfixer https://www.crfb.org/debtfixer In this simulation you

by which 2y ago

Highly recommend anyone who cares about this to do the CRFB’s Debt Fixer: https://www.crfb.org/debtfixer https://www.crfb.org/debtfixer In this simulation you have to make choices to bring debt to 100% of GDP by 2034. For the most part you learn that discretionary spending is largely irrelevant though has modest room for improvement in military/federal employee benefits, payroll tax rate needs to go up and probably apply to all income, most of the TCJA needs to expire, and Medicare needs to be more efficient. Which all hit politically important constituencies in different ways so nothing will get done. Obama should have done the deal with Boehner and there would have been fewer hard choices to make!

unethical_ban 2y ago
Hm, I'm wondering why "paid family leave" is listed as if anyone is suggesting the government pay for it. When I have heard discussion of paid leave, it's always been "mandate companies provide it", not "federal government pays a stipend". In "Build and support affordable housing", it lists a large increase in debt. Does that calculation take into account likely savings for local and state entities and hospitals? I get it's a federal calculator, but it feels somewhat myopic. I guess the same could be said by a military hawk, who may assert "Sure, cut spending by $450B in ten years, but World War 3 will cost $10T!"
- roenxi 2y ago
  > Hm, I'm wondering why "paid family leave" is listed as if anyone is suggesting the government pay for it. This vaguely reminds me of that classic "Americans will eventually do the right thing after thoroughly exploring all the alternatives" quote. The issue, at the highest level, is that the political process has agreed how much redistribution needs to happen and how much taxation is reasonable. The two numbers don't match, the situation is impossible to sustain and needs to be renegotiated - either more taxation or less redistributing. It doesn't really matter if the redistributing is officially handled via the government or forced to happen as a direct payment from taxee to welfare recipient. That is still settling the negotiation by saying that the taxpayers need to pay more. It is a little less administratively efficient to officially route it through the government but frankly I think that is a better idea. The US political consensus seems to be heading towards "we'll settle this by raising taxes, but we'll do it through payroll, inflation and corporate tax to try and disguise who is paying". That is a lousy strategy that will result in people getting poorer, not understanding why and lashing out randomly because they can sense at some level that they are worse off.
  - velcrovan 2y ago
    > It is a little less administratively efficient to officially route it through the government but frankly I think that is a better idea. It is massively more efficient at a macro level for the government to handle it, than to make every single employer manage it redundantly and often poorly. The SSA already handles payments to millions of Americans monthly with low operational overhead. Have them send out these and other safety net checks, and if you want to means test it, claw it back from high earners after the fact at tax return time.
  - pkaye 2y ago
    > This vaguely reminds me of that classic "Americans will eventually do the right thing after thoroughly exploring all the alternatives" quote. Apparently this quote originates from another quote that didn't refer to any specific country. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternatives/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternative...
SllX 2y ago
This is a fun game. Thank you for linking it. I just did one run-through to see what it’s like but now that I know what some of the later choices are I might adjust some of my earlier answers. I fixed the budget by saving $13,350B dollars relative to current law. Debt would be down to 84% of GDP by 2034 and 35% in 2050.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Honestly, this game didn't let me make as deep of cuts to social security and medicare as I would have liked. The reason this game has you make difficult choices in other areas is because you can't do things like "raise retirement age for unconditional benefits to 80" or "means-test all retirement benefits." The class of people that is drawing money out of social security and Medicare (old Americans) is the richest group of people ever in history. I have no interest in continuing to funnel money from the poor to the rich.
  - SllX 2y ago
    It seems to be limited to actual proposals made under the last two Presidential administrations. Even under that criteria I couldn’t tell you if it grabbed everything, but I feel you. There’s no granularity like privatizing Social Security, eliminating tax incentives for employer-based health plans, reclassifying specific pharmaceuticals so you don’t need to go through a doctor who sends you through a behind-the-counter pharmacy, etc. It has a scope, but I think within that scope it offers enough granularity with just actual proposals and laws that were proposed or passed under the last two administrations to give you some clue into what’s possible; which is why I like it because even with that, it is possible to achieve the goal.
ks2048 2y ago
They should let you draw a line: the federal income tax rate as a function of income. I saw some options for repealing recent tax cuts, but I want to go back to the tax rates of the 1950s. Actually it would be neat to make something like that - anyone know where to get very detailed data on distribution of incomes? A quick search and I only see fairly course bins. I think this would need a lot of detail, especially at the high outliers.
- gbacon 2y ago
  Almost no one paid these predatory marginal rates. People respond to incentives. > Data from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget show that federal income tax receipts as a percentage of GDP have fluctuated between 5.6 percent and 9.9 percent since 1950, despite dramatic changes in the top marginal income tax rate. https://checkyourfact.com/2019/01/09/fact-check-90-percent-taxes-eisenhower-1950s/ https://checkyourfact.com/2019/01/09/fact-check-90-percent-t...
  - ks2048 2y ago
    "almost no one" is consistent with the ultra-high income earners (e.g. top 10,000). This article sites Piketty and Saez, "the top 0.01 percent paid an average total federal tax rate of 71.4 percent in 1960 compared to 34.7 percent in 2004". Okay, 71.4% is not %90, but still pretty high.
    - hindsightbias 2y ago
      People dreaming of going back to Leave It To Beaver times might want to rethink that.
Olreich 2y ago
Or you can apply taxes to corporations and the ultra-wealthy and drop the debt easily while expanding medicare, social security benefits, college, etc. The counter-point of "then all the companies will leave" seems unlikely considering the wealth of natural resources and high quality of living that the US offers. We haven't really tried fixing the wealth gap since the Great Depression, so maybe it's time to give it another go.
- twoodfin 2y ago
  The incidence of corporate taxes on the average American is hotly debated but it’s definitely well above 0. Confiscating 100% of the ultra wealthy’s wealth would—for any reasonable definition of “ultra wealthy”—perhaps fund the government for a year or two.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    Probably like 6 months, maybe. I agree with the premise of your point.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    But if you took just one billion dollars from Jeff Bezos you could give a million dollars to every American. I've been told such things many times.
    - twoodfin 2y ago
      One way to think about this silly math in reverse: Split-adjusted, Amazon IPO’d at $0.075 a share. If instead of raiding my $3 piece of Jeff’s billion, I had the good sense to give him that pittance 25 years ago, it’d be worth $7,400 today.
    - msisk6 2y ago
      I know this is in jest, but it might be the root of the problem; a lot of folks don't have a good grasp on basic math, especially with large numbers, and fall victim to this kind of thinking.
    - 2y ago
doctorpangloss 2y ago
This was significantly more informative than the video. It really depends how good the forecasts on a wealth tax will be. After all, that stuff is based on inflated asset values that are unusual compared to the rest of the world. If you believe that our medical spending is unusual here, then you should also believe that our asset values are unusual. You can't pick and choose what is unusual, if all you're doing is comparing to the rest of the world. Without that wealth tax, does it make sense to limit the mission of many of these programs? For example, the military has a constantly expanding mission, and much of that mission is domestic welfare, do we want to cap that? Overall it is very enlightening. You will never be the CEO of a giant corporation, and you are basically never the beneficiary of its wealth. You don't need to give a big tax handout to Apple and Google. Seems easy to deal with.
georgeecollins 2y ago
The funny thing is that if the US actually reduced its debt by that much it would be a big problem for financial markets because investors like to hold US securities. The interest rate would go down because supply would be less then demand. The US has too much debt but cutting the debt drastically would have knock on effects on our financial system. Maybe create an asset bubble? I don't know.
dventimi 2y ago
Highly recommend anyone who cares about this to recognize that it's easy to "fix the debt" in the Debt Fixer just by raising taxes.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by which 2y ago

unethical_ban 2y ago

Hm, I'm wondering why "paid family leave" is listed as if anyone is suggesting the government pay for it. When I have heard discussion of paid leave, it's always been "mandate companies provide it", not "federal government pays a stipend". In "Build and support affordable housing", it lists a large increase in debt. Does that calculation take into account likely savings for local and state entities and hospitals? I get it's a federal calculator, but it feels somewhat myopic. I guess the same could be said by a military hawk, who may assert "Sure, cut spending by $450B in ten years, but World War 3 will cost $10T!"

roenxi 2y ago
> Hm, I'm wondering why "paid family leave" is listed as if anyone is suggesting the government pay for it. This vaguely reminds me of that classic "Americans will eventually do the right thing after thoroughly exploring all the alternatives" quote. The issue, at the highest level, is that the political process has agreed how much redistribution needs to happen and how much taxation is reasonable. The two numbers don't match, the situation is impossible to sustain and needs to be renegotiated - either more taxation or less redistributing. It doesn't really matter if the redistributing is officially handled via the government or forced to happen as a direct payment from taxee to welfare recipient. That is still settling the negotiation by saying that the taxpayers need to pay more. It is a little less administratively efficient to officially route it through the government but frankly I think that is a better idea. The US political consensus seems to be heading towards "we'll settle this by raising taxes, but we'll do it through payroll, inflation and corporate tax to try and disguise who is paying". That is a lousy strategy that will result in people getting poorer, not understanding why and lashing out randomly because they can sense at some level that they are worse off.
- velcrovan 2y ago
  > It is a little less administratively efficient to officially route it through the government but frankly I think that is a better idea. It is massively more efficient at a macro level for the government to handle it, than to make every single employer manage it redundantly and often poorly. The SSA already handles payments to millions of Americans monthly with low operational overhead. Have them send out these and other safety net checks, and if you want to means test it, claw it back from high earners after the fact at tax return time.
- pkaye 2y ago
  > This vaguely reminds me of that classic "Americans will eventually do the right thing after thoroughly exploring all the alternatives" quote. Apparently this quote originates from another quote that didn't refer to any specific country. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternatives/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternative...

SllX 2y ago

This is a fun game. Thank you for linking it. I just did one run-through to see what it’s like but now that I know what some of the later choices are I might adjust some of my earlier answers. I fixed the budget by saving $13,350B dollars relative to current law. Debt would be down to 84% of GDP by 2034 and 35% in 2050.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
Honestly, this game didn't let me make as deep of cuts to social security and medicare as I would have liked. The reason this game has you make difficult choices in other areas is because you can't do things like "raise retirement age for unconditional benefits to 80" or "means-test all retirement benefits." The class of people that is drawing money out of social security and Medicare (old Americans) is the richest group of people ever in history. I have no interest in continuing to funnel money from the poor to the rich.
- SllX 2y ago
  It seems to be limited to actual proposals made under the last two Presidential administrations. Even under that criteria I couldn’t tell you if it grabbed everything, but I feel you. There’s no granularity like privatizing Social Security, eliminating tax incentives for employer-based health plans, reclassifying specific pharmaceuticals so you don’t need to go through a doctor who sends you through a behind-the-counter pharmacy, etc. It has a scope, but I think within that scope it offers enough granularity with just actual proposals and laws that were proposed or passed under the last two administrations to give you some clue into what’s possible; which is why I like it because even with that, it is possible to achieve the goal.

ks2048 2y ago

They should let you draw a line: the federal income tax rate as a function of income. I saw some options for repealing recent tax cuts, but I want to go back to the tax rates of the 1950s. Actually it would be neat to make something like that - anyone know where to get very detailed data on distribution of incomes? A quick search and I only see fairly course bins. I think this would need a lot of detail, especially at the high outliers.

gbacon 2y ago
Almost no one paid these predatory marginal rates. People respond to incentives. > Data from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget show that federal income tax receipts as a percentage of GDP have fluctuated between 5.6 percent and 9.9 percent since 1950, despite dramatic changes in the top marginal income tax rate. https://checkyourfact.com/2019/01/09/fact-check-90-percent-taxes-eisenhower-1950s/ https://checkyourfact.com/2019/01/09/fact-check-90-percent-t...
- ks2048 2y ago
  "almost no one" is consistent with the ultra-high income earners (e.g. top 10,000). This article sites Piketty and Saez, "the top 0.01 percent paid an average total federal tax rate of 71.4 percent in 1960 compared to 34.7 percent in 2004". Okay, 71.4% is not %90, but still pretty high.
  - hindsightbias 2y ago
    People dreaming of going back to Leave It To Beaver times might want to rethink that.

Olreich 2y ago

Or you can apply taxes to corporations and the ultra-wealthy and drop the debt easily while expanding medicare, social security benefits, college, etc. The counter-point of "then all the companies will leave" seems unlikely considering the wealth of natural resources and high quality of living that the US offers. We haven't really tried fixing the wealth gap since the Great Depression, so maybe it's time to give it another go.

twoodfin 2y ago
The incidence of corporate taxes on the average American is hotly debated but it’s definitely well above 0. Confiscating 100% of the ultra wealthy’s wealth would—for any reasonable definition of “ultra wealthy”—perhaps fund the government for a year or two.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  Probably like 6 months, maybe. I agree with the premise of your point.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  But if you took just one billion dollars from Jeff Bezos you could give a million dollars to every American. I've been told such things many times.
  - twoodfin 2y ago
    One way to think about this silly math in reverse: Split-adjusted, Amazon IPO’d at $0.075 a share. If instead of raiding my $3 piece of Jeff’s billion, I had the good sense to give him that pittance 25 years ago, it’d be worth $7,400 today.
  - msisk6 2y ago
    I know this is in jest, but it might be the root of the problem; a lot of folks don't have a good grasp on basic math, especially with large numbers, and fall victim to this kind of thinking.
  - 2y ago

doctorpangloss 2y ago

This was significantly more informative than the video. It really depends how good the forecasts on a wealth tax will be. After all, that stuff is based on inflated asset values that are unusual compared to the rest of the world. If you believe that our medical spending is unusual here, then you should also believe that our asset values are unusual. You can't pick and choose what is unusual, if all you're doing is comparing to the rest of the world. Without that wealth tax, does it make sense to limit the mission of many of these programs? For example, the military has a constantly expanding mission, and much of that mission is domestic welfare, do we want to cap that? Overall it is very enlightening. You will never be the CEO of a giant corporation, and you are basically never the beneficiary of its wealth. You don't need to give a big tax handout to Apple and Google. Seems easy to deal with.

georgeecollins 2y ago

The funny thing is that if the US actually reduced its debt by that much it would be a big problem for financial markets because investors like to hold US securities. The interest rate would go down because supply would be less then demand. The US has too much debt but cutting the debt drastically would have knock on effects on our financial system. Maybe create an asset bubble? I don't know.

dventimi 2y ago

Highly recommend anyone who cares about this to recognize that it's easy to "fix the debt" in the Debt Fixer just by raising taxes.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]