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If spending is not out of control then how do we square that with nearing 2 trillion in debt added each year? Is there a trick that makes that state of affairs

If spending is not out of control then how do we square that with nearing 2 trillion in debt added each year? Is there a trick that makes that state of affairs sustainable?

rhelz 2y ago
It's not really any mystery. We had a surplus in the Late 90's. Taxes were cut by George W Bush and again by Trump. There is no such thing as a self-funding tax cut. Doesn't matter how steady the spending is, if the income is cut, you will start going in debt.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  Didn't we also have a financial crisis in the late 90s? Asian financial crisis, Dotcom bubble? Was the surplus during those years?
  - oblio 2y ago
    Fairly sure Clinton left with a surplus. The Asian financial crisis primarily affected... Asia, and the dotcom bubble wasn't a humongous issue outside of IT, which was a much smaller sector back then.
    - Jtsummers 2y ago
      https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio... Yes, he did. Deficit spending returned with George W Bush, reaching a high with the Global Financial Crisis, was getting back under control until Trump, and then peaked with COVID.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        edit: Whoops.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        Jtsummers 2y ago
        > getting back under control until Trump You seem to have misread my comment, I wrote "until", not "under". Also, it actually increased twice under Obama. The peak before COVID was in FY 2008 (fully under Bush), then it was slightly better in FY 2009 (Bush and Obama), then rose again in FY 2010 (fully Obama), then declined until FY 2016 when it rose again (fully Obama) and continued rising under Trump.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        Argh, my bad. Definitely a misread on my part.
        Jtsummers 2y ago
        No worries, you actually had me questioning what I wrote and I had to make sure I didn't mistype "under" for "until". macOS is aggressively wrong with autocorrect and I hadn't turned it off on this computer.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > Fairly sure Clinton left with a surplus. 1998-2001 had budget surpluses [0], but despite some quarterly drops, the national debt was generally climbing all through that period. [1] [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    All these numbers are public. I linked this in another response: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio... But you can get a lot of data from this site: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  The wholly unnecessary war in Iraq (I’ll allow Afghanistan though I think that was also a very, very stupid move) didn’t help. Trillions of dollars. But yes it’s largely tax cuts. Including cutting taxes while starting that war.
- stouset 2y ago
  Ah yes, I “fondly” remember constantly being told that tax cuts would stimulate the economy so much they’d be revenue-positive. This, it turned out, was a lie. And not a very convincing one to anyone with even half a functioning brain cell.
  - water9 2y ago
    [flagged]
outside1234 2y ago
Irresponsible tax cuts?
- drivebyhooting 2y ago
  Whom will you tax to increase IRS revenue by 2 trillion per year?
  - BoiledCabbage 2y ago
    The lowest the deficit has been in the past 20 years was the year Obama handed things over to Trump. The lowest it's been in the past 30 years was the year Clinton handed it over to Bush. Maybe stop giving control of our purse strings to the people digging us into this situation.
    - stouset 2y ago
      It turns out that the tax-and-spend moniker Democrats were labeled with is infinitely preferable to the spend-and-spend-and-spend behavior Republicans have implemented in practice.
      - daveguy 2y ago
        Well, republicans have only been trying to push tax and spend for the last 40+ years.
        alabastervlog 2y ago
        The problem is Republicans spend (it’s actually super hard to cut government spending, a whole lot of it is very popular or is spending that saves money in other ways) and cut taxes. They’re talking about doing it again. They are full to the eyeballs with shit when they complain about the deficit.
        daveguy 2y ago
BoiledCabbage 2y ago
> A serious problem, if you’re concerned about debt and deficits ... is that, aside from the late 1990s, revenues haven’t kept up with spending since around 1970. They took hits from George W. Bush’s tax cuts after 2001 and from Trump’s after 2017... Spending % has been flat for 50 years, but Republicans keep worsening the deficit with unfunded tax cuts.
- water9 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - oblio 2y ago
    The thing is... If it's the Democrats' fault, why did spending also increase under Republican administrations?
    - water9 2y ago
      Because of Covid
      - oblio 2y ago
        And Reagan? And Bush (both of them)? Come on. https://www.ft.com/content/afef409e-f758-11e9-9ef3-eca8fc8f2d65 https://www.ft.com/content/afef409e-f758-11e9-9ef3-eca8fc8f2... The surplus you see there was during Clinton, you know, a Democrat. And the huge drop during Obama was because... Bush repealed several Depression era bank regulations that led to the Global Financial Crisis. Democrats are "tax and spend", Republicans are "reduce taxes for the rich, spend as much as Democrats, say we don't spend".
ncallaway 2y ago
What's happened to taxes over the last 3 decades? What were the top-line tax rates in the 1950s, 1970s, 1990s, 2010s, and now? What did the distribution if incomes look like between the richest and poorest in each of those decades. We've continually cut taxes on the wealthiest in society, allowing them to get ever richer. The poor have continued to get poorer, and have less and less to contribute in tax revenue. Spending is flat, revenue goes down, deficit goes up. It's pretty simple math. The state of affairs is not sustainable, but the solution is not gutting spending (there are, I'm sure, areas that could be trimmed), but rather returning to tax rates and policies that we had in the past, along with some bonus-taxes to reduce the extreme income-inequality that we currently have. So, if you want fiscal sustainability: - tax the ever-living-fuck out of the billionaire class - increase taxes significantly on the multi-millionaire class - increase taxes moderately on the millionaire-class - significantly increase estate taxes, especially on estates worth >$1B Maintain that for a couple of decades, then slowly and slightly relax the top-line tax rates. If someone is selling you fiscal sustainability without talking about making a billionaire's eyes water, they are just lying to you.
- sumeno 2y ago
  It's embarrassing that the most well thought out and detailed response is being downvoted
- floren 2y ago
  They'll lie to you by saying that back in the 50s when the top tax rates were so high, the rich just "didn't pay". Well, if you look at the revenue vs spending lines, SOMEBODY was paying!
- lurk2 2y ago
  > Spending is flat, revenue goes down, deficit goes up. It's pretty simple math. Can you demonstrate that this is what actually occurred? This data from the IRS shows inflation-adjusted revenues increasing in the last two decades. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/22intaba.xls https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/22intaba.xls
  - 2y ago
dashundchen 2y ago
Surely it's not proposing trillions of dollars in tax cuts to billionaires like the GOP Congress is doing right now. Expanding the same tax cuts Trump passed last time that added trillions to the debt The GOP concern about the debt is feigned because they are the ones who ran it up.
jbverschoor 2y ago
That’s why he’ll start selling 1 million golden visas at 5m each, meaning 5T. Add 1M btc at $2M per piece, and he cut 20% of the national debt :)
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  We already have investor visas. $1Mish gets you in. ~10k/year issued. It seems unlikely raising the price 5x will increase demand 100x.
  - jbverschoor 2y ago
    Key difference is that you won’t be taxed on foreign assets
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- stego-tech 2y ago
  …that’s not how any of this works, and we’re tired of having to entertain this sort of sycophant idiocy that ignores basic maths and statistics. But just to drop the mic for anyone scrolling past your comment and thinking it has merit, let me make it clear why your taste in boot leather is disgustingly banal. 1) There’s an estimated 65 million millionaires on Earth. Let’s be super generous and say that 60 million of those have a net worth of at least $10mil USD, which would make the $5mil “golden visa” a viable investment without bankrupting them. 2) Now we deduct around 25 million people from that number, because that’s how many millionaires America is estimated to have. Now your audience is down to just 35 million people 3) Of those numbers, they’ve likely had multiple years to consider investing into the prior “golden visa”, which would’ve been achievable with about $100k. They did not apply, so it stands to reason they were not interested. So now our theoretical customer base is 0 people. 4) Now let’s consider newly-minted millionaires, say the AI and Quantum griftos. Being incredibly generous, let’s keep the same ratio as above, of 2/3rds being outside the USA. We’re now figuring, what, a million people? Tops? 5) Except, just like the crypto griftos, these people are likely to have a distrust of democratic institutions and regulations. So they’re unlikely to have begun the visa process beforehand at the lower rates, and now have to gauge the value of a US visa at $5m instead of $100k. 6) Factoring the increased costs of housing, healthcare, staples, and essentials, it’s highly unlikely they’d consider America as a viable destination over other, cheaper, more stable countries - like Switzerland. But being generous again, let’s say 250k people think yeah, America is where I want to be. 7) Except they can just buy property and visit on a tourist visa for less, keeping their main base elsewhere. They don’t have to migrate. So let’s cut that down to 50k who see the value in migrating, and can afford it, and can eat the higher costs of living in the USA, and can stomach the increased polarization and instability. 50k * 5mil = $250bn, or about a third of the defense budget. For one fiscal year. They're lying to your face, and you need to accept that.
androng 2y ago
I think it is the graph not showing the full picture. I assume there are a lot of contractor and spending not shown on the graph because they are "services" and not people officially employed by the government. eg contractors or Crisis Tech Line that gets all its money from government.
- nabla9 2y ago
  The graph shows public money spent. It includes contractors and services from private sector.
serjester 2y ago
Looking at the graph it seems pretty clear that spending has out stripped revenues for a really long time. This doesn’t seem like something to be proud of.
- nabla9 2y ago
  Government debt is delayed taxation. If you assume that private sector is more productive than public sector, then it makes sens to delay taxation, because GDP growth will be higher. Same tax/GDP share with debt pays you more with the same money. The nominal sum growing means nothing. The thing to watch is debt to gdb ratio and debt service cost to gdp ratio.
LorenPechtel 2y ago
And why do you assume that it must be spending that's out of control? What's happening is the Republicans keep promising that their tax cuts will be self-funding, they never are. Spending is stable, they keep cutting revenue. It's their intention to cause the system to fail!
erentz 2y ago
Not sure why everyone pointing this out is being downvoted. But we reduced revenue (taxes) while keeping spending the same. So debt goes up. On top of that some emergency situations have also contributed (GFC, COVID) and then and in the Iraq war. Right now they’re proposing a budget that will reduce taxes again, and increase our debt by over $4 trillion. Edit: seriously everyone here knows math, this is math, it is public data, why is it treated this way. Argue the substance of cutting programs, but you can’t argue that deciding to raise less tax revenue than you spend increases the debt!
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  The government has people dedicated to figuring out this stuff. The CBO. They advise Congress and publish reports on legislation. Every time the Republicans say these things will pay for themselves, and every time the CBO is like, “uh, no, it’ll cost $X trillion over ten years”. Everyone ignores them. Now we’re several trillion deep in debt from George W Bush and Trump tax cuts, as predicted by the people who actually know how shit works.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - distortionfield 2y ago
    And now that we’re in debt for them, they’re using that massive debt, that they created, to argue for dismantling and privatizing those same systems.
  - xnx 2y ago
    Musk will probably "delete" the CBO next.
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      It’s under the legislative branch.
      - 2y ago
kfrzcode 2y ago
Deficit spending can be stable and also inflate the debt holdings.
Marsymars 2y ago
Well looking at 2024 USD numbers per person for the USA: GDP: 86,601 Tax revenue: 14,467 Expenses: 19,852 For New Zealand, in NZD: GDP: 85,933 Tax revenue: 25,185 Expenses: 26,684
astura 2y ago
TFA addresses this- >A serious problem, if you’re concerned about debt and deficits—I’ll address that some other time—is that, aside from the late 1990s, revenues haven’t kept up with spending since around 1970. They took hits from George W. Bush’s tax cuts after 2001 and from Trump’s after 2017, but the revenue line has also been essentially flat for decades, just at a level well below spending. Funnily, the people most concerned about debts and deficits—rich people and those who shill for them—are the ones most opposed to paying taxes.
stock_toaster 2y ago
Look at the actual budget[1][2] some time. We spend a _lot_ on defense, social security, and medicare/medicaid (which I believe are all allocated as part of congressional laws, and not part of the discretionary budget). Maybe if corporations and the richest tax bracket actually paid their fair share of taxes, it would be fine? Instead the Republican congress has historically gone with _tax cuts_ for the wealthiest instead. [1]: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_detail_2024bs22024n https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_detail_2... [2]: https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everything-you-want-to-know-about-government-spending/ https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everythin...
- from-nibly 2y ago
  They wont ever pay "their fair share". Taxes aren't for funding the government. They are for keeping the middle class on the treadmill.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Spending is not increasing (which is the hype) but it is consistently above revenues, but every president except Clinton. Thus the deficit grows every year. The trick: It’s that US debt is denominated in US dollars, which means the US can always print more money to pay off its debt (that has other consequences like inflation if done too quickly). Secondly the US economy and government has been such that its debt is considered one of if no the “safest” investment.
missedthecue 2y ago
I make $60k a year and I'm not married, and I'll just take the standard deduction. I will have an 8.7% federal tax burden for the 2024 year. If you inflation-adjust my income backwards to 1990 so it's apples to apples, and then estimate my federal tax burden using the same scenario, it's approaching double. About 15%. Americans, despite all the moaning (from which I'm not immune) are undertaxed by just about every standard. If Americans were taxed at 1990 standards, based on my quick estimation, we'd close the deficit almost completely, or even produce a surplus. As you can imagine, "I'll double your taxes" is not a winning campaign promise.
- drivebyhooting 2y ago
  Interesting. So tax the poor too?
  - missedthecue 2y ago
    When you look at Europe, they raise most of their taxes from the lower to middle classes, i.e. people like me. Through both higher income taxes and then a 20% VAT on most purchases you make with your post-tax earnings. Here is an interesting paper (pdf warning) which on page 49 shows a very good visual of just how progressive the US tax system is compared to both Eastern and Western Europe. In Europe, the tax burden is much more evenly distributed across incomes. https://wid.world/document/why-is-europe-more-equal-than-the-united-states-world-inequality-lab-wp-2020-19/ https://wid.world/document/why-is-europe-more-equal-than-the... If you'd like to not bother with the the pdf, here's the image directly. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FD_3ONtXoBMZUGs.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FD_3ONtXoBMZUGs.png
  - xnx 2y ago
    Ultra tax the ultra rich.
ghthor 2y ago
Ross Perot back in the nineties showed that half of the budget was for Medicare/Medicaid. I suspect getting the country healthy so we’re not all just paying for big pharma’s yachts will have a significant effect on the federal budget. I’m very intrigued by what homeopathy can do here. It can replace fertizlers and pesticides, cleaning up the environment and our fresh water supply. We have to do this to get everyone healthy. It can replace widespread antibiotic use on livestock. We got to do these things or we’re all just going to be big pharma zombies.

If spending is not out of control then how do we square that with nearing 2 trillion in debt added each year? Is there a trick that makes that state of affairs sustainable?

rhelz 2y ago

It's not really any mystery. We had a surplus in the Late 90's. Taxes were cut by George W Bush and again by Trump. There is no such thing as a self-funding tax cut. Doesn't matter how steady the spending is, if the income is cut, you will start going in debt.

NewJazz 2y ago
Didn't we also have a financial crisis in the late 90s? Asian financial crisis, Dotcom bubble? Was the surplus during those years?
- oblio 2y ago
  Fairly sure Clinton left with a surplus. The Asian financial crisis primarily affected... Asia, and the dotcom bubble wasn't a humongous issue outside of IT, which was a much smaller sector back then.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio... Yes, he did. Deficit spending returned with George W Bush, reaching a high with the Global Financial Crisis, was getting back under control until Trump, and then peaked with COVID.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      edit: Whoops.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - Jtsummers 2y ago
        > getting back under control until Trump You seem to have misread my comment, I wrote "until", not "under". Also, it actually increased twice under Obama. The peak before COVID was in FY 2008 (fully under Bush), then it was slightly better in FY 2009 (Bush and Obama), then rose again in FY 2010 (fully Obama), then declined until FY 2016 when it rose again (fully Obama) and continued rising under Trump.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        Argh, my bad. Definitely a misread on my part.
        Jtsummers 2y ago
        No worries, you actually had me questioning what I wrote and I had to make sure I didn't mistype "under" for "until". macOS is aggressively wrong with autocorrect and I hadn't turned it off on this computer.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > Fairly sure Clinton left with a surplus. 1998-2001 had budget surpluses [0], but despite some quarterly drops, the national debt was generally climbing all through that period. [1] [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  All these numbers are public. I linked this in another response: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio... But you can get a lot of data from this site: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/
alabastervlog 2y ago
The wholly unnecessary war in Iraq (I’ll allow Afghanistan though I think that was also a very, very stupid move) didn’t help. Trillions of dollars. But yes it’s largely tax cuts. Including cutting taxes while starting that war.
stouset 2y ago
Ah yes, I “fondly” remember constantly being told that tax cuts would stimulate the economy so much they’d be revenue-positive. This, it turned out, was a lie. And not a very convincing one to anyone with even half a functioning brain cell.
- water9 2y ago
  [flagged]

outside1234 2y ago

Irresponsible tax cuts?

drivebyhooting 2y ago
Whom will you tax to increase IRS revenue by 2 trillion per year?
- BoiledCabbage 2y ago
  The lowest the deficit has been in the past 20 years was the year Obama handed things over to Trump. The lowest it's been in the past 30 years was the year Clinton handed it over to Bush. Maybe stop giving control of our purse strings to the people digging us into this situation.
  - stouset 2y ago
    It turns out that the tax-and-spend moniker Democrats were labeled with is infinitely preferable to the spend-and-spend-and-spend behavior Republicans have implemented in practice.
    - daveguy 2y ago
      Well, republicans have only been trying to push tax and spend for the last 40+ years.
      - alabastervlog 2y ago
        The problem is Republicans spend (it’s actually super hard to cut government spending, a whole lot of it is very popular or is spending that saves money in other ways) and cut taxes. They’re talking about doing it again. They are full to the eyeballs with shit when they complain about the deficit.
        daveguy 2y ago

BoiledCabbage 2y ago

> A serious problem, if you’re concerned about debt and deficits ... is that, aside from the late 1990s, revenues haven’t kept up with spending since around 1970. They took hits from George W. Bush’s tax cuts after 2001 and from Trump’s after 2017... Spending % has been flat for 50 years, but Republicans keep worsening the deficit with unfunded tax cuts.

water9 2y ago
[flagged]
- oblio 2y ago
  The thing is... If it's the Democrats' fault, why did spending also increase under Republican administrations?
  - water9 2y ago
    Because of Covid
    - oblio 2y ago
      And Reagan? And Bush (both of them)? Come on. https://www.ft.com/content/afef409e-f758-11e9-9ef3-eca8fc8f2d65 https://www.ft.com/content/afef409e-f758-11e9-9ef3-eca8fc8f2... The surplus you see there was during Clinton, you know, a Democrat. And the huge drop during Obama was because... Bush repealed several Depression era bank regulations that led to the Global Financial Crisis. Democrats are "tax and spend", Republicans are "reduce taxes for the rich, spend as much as Democrats, say we don't spend".

ncallaway 2y ago

What's happened to taxes over the last 3 decades? What were the top-line tax rates in the 1950s, 1970s, 1990s, 2010s, and now? What did the distribution if incomes look like between the richest and poorest in each of those decades. We've continually cut taxes on the wealthiest in society, allowing them to get ever richer. The poor have continued to get poorer, and have less and less to contribute in tax revenue. Spending is flat, revenue goes down, deficit goes up. It's pretty simple math. The state of affairs is not sustainable, but the solution is not gutting spending (there are, I'm sure, areas that could be trimmed), but rather returning to tax rates and policies that we had in the past, along with some bonus-taxes to reduce the extreme income-inequality that we currently have. So, if you want fiscal sustainability: - tax the ever-living-fuck out of the billionaire class - increase taxes significantly on the multi-millionaire class - increase taxes moderately on the millionaire-class - significantly increase estate taxes, especially on estates worth >$1B Maintain that for a couple of decades, then slowly and slightly relax the top-line tax rates. If someone is selling you fiscal sustainability without talking about making a billionaire's eyes water, they are just lying to you.

sumeno 2y ago
It's embarrassing that the most well thought out and detailed response is being downvoted
floren 2y ago
They'll lie to you by saying that back in the 50s when the top tax rates were so high, the rich just "didn't pay". Well, if you look at the revenue vs spending lines, SOMEBODY was paying!
lurk2 2y ago
> Spending is flat, revenue goes down, deficit goes up. It's pretty simple math. Can you demonstrate that this is what actually occurred? This data from the IRS shows inflation-adjusted revenues increasing in the last two decades. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/22intaba.xls https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/22intaba.xls
- 2y ago

dashundchen 2y ago

Surely it's not proposing trillions of dollars in tax cuts to billionaires like the GOP Congress is doing right now. Expanding the same tax cuts Trump passed last time that added trillions to the debt The GOP concern about the debt is feigned because they are the ones who ran it up.

jbverschoor 2y ago

That’s why he’ll start selling 1 million golden visas at 5m each, meaning 5T. Add 1M btc at $2M per piece, and he cut 20% of the national debt :)

ceejayoz 2y ago
We already have investor visas. $1Mish gets you in. ~10k/year issued. It seems unlikely raising the price 5x will increase demand 100x.
- jbverschoor 2y ago
  Key difference is that you won’t be taxed on foreign assets
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
stego-tech 2y ago
…that’s not how any of this works, and we’re tired of having to entertain this sort of sycophant idiocy that ignores basic maths and statistics. But just to drop the mic for anyone scrolling past your comment and thinking it has merit, let me make it clear why your taste in boot leather is disgustingly banal. 1) There’s an estimated 65 million millionaires on Earth. Let’s be super generous and say that 60 million of those have a net worth of at least $10mil USD, which would make the $5mil “golden visa” a viable investment without bankrupting them. 2) Now we deduct around 25 million people from that number, because that’s how many millionaires America is estimated to have. Now your audience is down to just 35 million people 3) Of those numbers, they’ve likely had multiple years to consider investing into the prior “golden visa”, which would’ve been achievable with about $100k. They did not apply, so it stands to reason they were not interested. So now our theoretical customer base is 0 people. 4) Now let’s consider newly-minted millionaires, say the AI and Quantum griftos. Being incredibly generous, let’s keep the same ratio as above, of 2/3rds being outside the USA. We’re now figuring, what, a million people? Tops? 5) Except, just like the crypto griftos, these people are likely to have a distrust of democratic institutions and regulations. So they’re unlikely to have begun the visa process beforehand at the lower rates, and now have to gauge the value of a US visa at $5m instead of $100k. 6) Factoring the increased costs of housing, healthcare, staples, and essentials, it’s highly unlikely they’d consider America as a viable destination over other, cheaper, more stable countries - like Switzerland. But being generous again, let’s say 250k people think yeah, America is where I want to be. 7) Except they can just buy property and visit on a tourist visa for less, keeping their main base elsewhere. They don’t have to migrate. So let’s cut that down to 50k who see the value in migrating, and can afford it, and can eat the higher costs of living in the USA, and can stomach the increased polarization and instability. 50k * 5mil = $250bn, or about a third of the defense budget. For one fiscal year. They're lying to your face, and you need to accept that.

androng 2y ago

I think it is the graph not showing the full picture. I assume there are a lot of contractor and spending not shown on the graph because they are "services" and not people officially employed by the government. eg contractors or Crisis Tech Line that gets all its money from government.

nabla9 2y ago
The graph shows public money spent. It includes contractors and services from private sector.

serjester 2y ago

Looking at the graph it seems pretty clear that spending has out stripped revenues for a really long time. This doesn’t seem like something to be proud of.

nabla9 2y ago
Government debt is delayed taxation. If you assume that private sector is more productive than public sector, then it makes sens to delay taxation, because GDP growth will be higher. Same tax/GDP share with debt pays you more with the same money. The nominal sum growing means nothing. The thing to watch is debt to gdb ratio and debt service cost to gdp ratio.

LorenPechtel 2y ago

And why do you assume that it must be spending that's out of control? What's happening is the Republicans keep promising that their tax cuts will be self-funding, they never are. Spending is stable, they keep cutting revenue. It's their intention to cause the system to fail!

erentz 2y ago

Not sure why everyone pointing this out is being downvoted. But we reduced revenue (taxes) while keeping spending the same. So debt goes up. On top of that some emergency situations have also contributed (GFC, COVID) and then and in the Iraq war. Right now they’re proposing a budget that will reduce taxes again, and increase our debt by over $4 trillion. Edit: seriously everyone here knows math, this is math, it is public data, why is it treated this way. Argue the substance of cutting programs, but you can’t argue that deciding to raise less tax revenue than you spend increases the debt!

alabastervlog 2y ago
The government has people dedicated to figuring out this stuff. The CBO. They advise Congress and publish reports on legislation. Every time the Republicans say these things will pay for themselves, and every time the CBO is like, “uh, no, it’ll cost $X trillion over ten years”. Everyone ignores them. Now we’re several trillion deep in debt from George W Bush and Trump tax cuts, as predicted by the people who actually know how shit works.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- distortionfield 2y ago
  And now that we’re in debt for them, they’re using that massive debt, that they created, to argue for dismantling and privatizing those same systems.
- xnx 2y ago
  Musk will probably "delete" the CBO next.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    It’s under the legislative branch.
    - 2y ago

kfrzcode 2y ago

Deficit spending can be stable and also inflate the debt holdings.

Marsymars 2y ago

Well looking at 2024 USD numbers per person for the USA: GDP: 86,601 Tax revenue: 14,467 Expenses: 19,852 For New Zealand, in NZD: GDP: 85,933 Tax revenue: 25,185 Expenses: 26,684

astura 2y ago

TFA addresses this- >A serious problem, if you’re concerned about debt and deficits—I’ll address that some other time—is that, aside from the late 1990s, revenues haven’t kept up with spending since around 1970. They took hits from George W. Bush’s tax cuts after 2001 and from Trump’s after 2017, but the revenue line has also been essentially flat for decades, just at a level well below spending. Funnily, the people most concerned about debts and deficits—rich people and those who shill for them—are the ones most opposed to paying taxes.

stock_toaster 2y ago

Look at the actual budget[1][2] some time. We spend a _lot_ on defense, social security, and medicare/medicaid (which I believe are all allocated as part of congressional laws, and not part of the discretionary budget). Maybe if corporations and the richest tax bracket actually paid their fair share of taxes, it would be fine? Instead the Republican congress has historically gone with _tax cuts_ for the wealthiest instead. [1]: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_detail_2024bs22024n https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_detail_2... [2]: https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everything-you-want-to-know-about-government-spending/ https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everythin...

from-nibly 2y ago
They wont ever pay "their fair share". Taxes aren't for funding the government. They are for keeping the middle class on the treadmill.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Spending is not increasing (which is the hype) but it is consistently above revenues, but every president except Clinton. Thus the deficit grows every year. The trick: It’s that US debt is denominated in US dollars, which means the US can always print more money to pay off its debt (that has other consequences like inflation if done too quickly). Secondly the US economy and government has been such that its debt is considered one of if no the “safest” investment.

missedthecue 2y ago

I make $60k a year and I'm not married, and I'll just take the standard deduction. I will have an 8.7% federal tax burden for the 2024 year. If you inflation-adjust my income backwards to 1990 so it's apples to apples, and then estimate my federal tax burden using the same scenario, it's approaching double. About 15%. Americans, despite all the moaning (from which I'm not immune) are undertaxed by just about every standard. If Americans were taxed at 1990 standards, based on my quick estimation, we'd close the deficit almost completely, or even produce a surplus. As you can imagine, "I'll double your taxes" is not a winning campaign promise.

drivebyhooting 2y ago
Interesting. So tax the poor too?
- missedthecue 2y ago
  When you look at Europe, they raise most of their taxes from the lower to middle classes, i.e. people like me. Through both higher income taxes and then a 20% VAT on most purchases you make with your post-tax earnings. Here is an interesting paper (pdf warning) which on page 49 shows a very good visual of just how progressive the US tax system is compared to both Eastern and Western Europe. In Europe, the tax burden is much more evenly distributed across incomes. https://wid.world/document/why-is-europe-more-equal-than-the-united-states-world-inequality-lab-wp-2020-19/ https://wid.world/document/why-is-europe-more-equal-than-the... If you'd like to not bother with the the pdf, here's the image directly. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FD_3ONtXoBMZUGs.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FD_3ONtXoBMZUGs.png
- xnx 2y ago
  Ultra tax the ultra rich.

ghthor 2y ago

Ross Perot back in the nineties showed that half of the budget was for Medicare/Medicaid. I suspect getting the country healthy so we’re not all just paying for big pharma’s yachts will have a significant effect on the federal budget. I’m very intrigued by what homeopathy can do here. It can replace fertizlers and pesticides, cleaning up the environment and our fresh water supply. We have to do this to get everyone healthy. It can replace widespread antibiotic use on livestock. We got to do these things or we’re all just going to be big pharma zombies.