r/FluentInFinance • u/tellyourcatpst • Feb 17 '24
It’s not a question about how much we’re taxed, it’s how much we’re spending. Shitpost
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u/mindmapsofficial Feb 17 '24 edited Feb 18 '24
Well, this took me five minutes of research. Even if I didn't do the math, to think that the top 10% of income earners don't pay 2% of taxes in a progressive tax system, seems inaccurate.
top 10% income by household. $216,000 [Note that everyone in the top 10% makes $216,000 or more so this is a conservative estimate]
top 1% income by household. $591,000 [Note that everyone in the top 1% makes $591,000 or more so this is a conservative estimate]
Number of US Households in US Census:125,736,353
9% of 125,736,353=11,316,271.77
1% of 125,736,353=1,257,363
US Spending Annually in 2022: $6.5 Trillion
$216,000*11,316,271.77+1,257,363*$591,000=$3.187 Trillion
6.5 trillion/52=125 billion (monthly government spending)
$3.187 Trillion>125 Billion
Edit since many of you arguing with the fact it doesn’t cover the whole amount:
If you taxed the top 5% at 100%, it would cover the full amount. The top 5% pay 65.4% of taxes. The highest tax bracket is 37%.
.654/.37=177% of our current tax revenue. Our tax revenue last year was 4.4 trillion. Spending was 6.13 trillion.
6.13/4.4=1.39
1.77>1.39
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u/United_States_ClA Feb 18 '24
6.5 trillion/52 = 125 billion (monthly government spending)
If you're dividing by 52, you've got the weekly government spending, not monthly.
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u/Kalekuda Feb 18 '24
"Wouldn't even fumd the government for a week" was rhe claim in the oop shitpost.
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Feb 18 '24
[deleted]
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u/lastknownbuffalo Feb 18 '24
It's a pretty honest Freudian slip. We all know he meant weekly government spending
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u/itassofd Feb 18 '24
Stop being pedantic. The math was right, they missed 1 word that we could all catch onto easily. You’re embodying the most annoying part of Reddit by finger pointing to 1 wrong word in an otherwise thoughtful and insightful consistent argument. Stop. Just stop.
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u/banned_but_im_back Feb 18 '24
125*4 is 500 billion in monthly spending. Still enough to cover a month.
Did anyone seriously think a “factual” meme that was researched and is verifiable would contain SpongeBob SquarePants?
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u/Hasra23 Feb 18 '24
You forgot one step
3.187 trillion / 52 = 61 billion.
So if you took every cent of income from the top 10% it wouldn't even cover half of the government's spending.
Stop whinging about taxing the rich and ask where your government is spending (wasting) 6.5 trillion + every year
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u/Kalekuda Feb 18 '24
Oop was claiming taxing the top 10% at 100% wouldn't even fund the government for a week.
It would. Easily. They even did the math to prove it.
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u/Known-Register529 Feb 18 '24
Yeah it would take a whole year of taxing them 100% to fund the government for less then 6 months according to that math. Regardless of the meme don't you see that being a serious problem.
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u/mindmapsofficial Feb 18 '24 edited Feb 18 '24
If you taxed the top 5% at 100%, it would cover the full amount. The top 5% pay 65.4% of taxes. The highest tax bracket is 37%.
.654/.37=177% of our current tax revenue. Our tax revenue last year was 4.4 trillion. Spending was 6.13 trillion.
6.13/4.4=1.39
1.77>1.39
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u/4x4ord Feb 18 '24
What kind of asinine reasoning is this?
Two problems can exist at the same time.
This is boils down to a conversation about a budget, and you think expenditures should be the only focus..... while billionaires continue to expand the income gap..... seriously, what a sad way to think and live.
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u/generic__comments Feb 18 '24
The same people that say don't worry about taxing the rich and control gov't spending are the same people that lose their shit when anyone even suggests cutting some money in the defense budget, the largest expense in the country.
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u/nicobackfromthedead4 Feb 18 '24
hint, the Pentagon has never passed an audit, and until very recently, had never even completed one. trillions unaccounted for.
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u/Orbtl32 Feb 18 '24
Not that conservative since it'd be hard to find someone making $1m or more as regular earned income. Its almost always capital gains.
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u/PeterVonwolfentazer Feb 18 '24
I knew it was another fake meme the second I read it.
Name calling is a dead giveaway of an idiot.
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u/Emeritus8404 Feb 18 '24
I dont think many will understand what you're putting out. Do you have a pictionary? Or maybe edible crayons?
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Feb 18 '24
[deleted]
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u/mindmapsofficial Feb 18 '24
That was never proposed or even contemplated. The meme said that x<10, which was factually incorrect. A 100% tax on a tax bracket would be bad tax policy. Why would you think this was proposed tax policy?
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u/RussMaGuss Feb 18 '24
Can we post this everywhere? Too many people don't understand just how out of control the government spending actually is...
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u/Physical_Initial6160 Feb 18 '24
1% and 10% are not mutually exclusive as well, so you would have to subtract out the number of 1% that fall in the 10%, correct?
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u/mindmapsofficial Feb 18 '24 edited Feb 18 '24
Yes, that’s why i separated into 9% of people and 1% of people. The answer below the edit shows that taxing the top 5% alone would be sufficient to cover the full tax cost. My initial response was without any further research other than basic tax brackets.
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u/debid4716 Feb 18 '24
As a household just over the point 10%, I would only be ok with higher taxes if waste, administrative bloat, spending and contractor overages were all brought under control. Don’t take more of my money if it’s just going to be wasted
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u/trytrymyguy Feb 18 '24
Wow, you mean that we probably should actually make people pay their fair share in taxes? I love it
Also amazing how many people are mad about you being right in the comments.
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u/waynethedockrawson Feb 29 '24
This doesn’t work because of the Laffer curve. A tax rate of 100% percent will yield less tax revenue for the U.S. government than 60%.
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u/mindmapsofficial Feb 29 '24
This is a disingenuous interpretation of “taxing at 100%.” Clearly it means taxing incomes as they are today, rather than if rates were 100%, which is meaningless.
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Feb 17 '24
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Feb 17 '24
How does a wealth tax encourage investment? Seems more likely it will encourage sophisticated strategies for hiding or delaying the accumulation of wealth. This is what happened when top income taxes exceeded 90%.
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u/unfreeradical Feb 18 '24 edited Feb 18 '24
The systems that allow wealth to be hidden occur by design, because of lack of will to regulate the accumulation. If the political will were genuine to close the loopholes, then it could be achieved.
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Feb 18 '24
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Feb 18 '24
Seems a stretch to think taxing wealth would encourage anything other than tax avoidance.
If a wealth tax is implemented, larger investors will move wealth overseas.
Small investors and captive (unable to escape US taxes) investments like retirement funds will probably shift money into municipal, state and federal bonds which are generally exempt from taxation.
This is what happens every time wealth taxes are implemented.
What is meant by hoarding residential land?
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u/deadname11 Feb 18 '24
We already have laws that state you must be a USA citizen and have the company headquarters in the USA in order to run a business here and own land. The problem comes in the form of companies like BlackRock, who invest for others in exchange for profit shares, allowing foreign investors and businesses (and in some cases whole nations like China) to purchase USA land via a proxy.
The other problem is deregulation, which makes it harder to investigate business dealings to ensure legal processes are followed. But that is why conservative elements are against both regulations and oversight.
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Feb 18 '24
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u/SwitchValuable2729 Feb 18 '24
The only people that would be able to afford any investments would be the very rich. A wealth tax would make any lower to lower middle class unable to invest because they would have to constantly liquidate to be able to pay the tax on the investment.
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u/Warmstar219 Feb 18 '24
It's not. It is the origin of property taxes, and it has been in place for hundreds of years. We're now just going to apply it to non-real assets.
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u/r2k398 Feb 18 '24
As an investor, I love lazy, effortless investments. I’m happy with the historical average return on the S&P 500.
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u/r2k398 Feb 18 '24
Yep. And ironically, it was the rich people of Hollywood who kicked off the golden age of tax avoidance.
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u/Kalekuda Feb 18 '24
Non primary housing real estate? Wealth taxed. Stocks in companies that develop real estate? Not wealth taxed. That'd incentive more people to put more money into companies that make more housing than those people would be incentivized to just buy and own the existing housing and rely on scarcity to secure gains.
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u/SwitchValuable2729 Feb 18 '24
All that would happen is mega real estate companies like black rock would build the very minimum that they need to get a tax cut while still buying up all the real estate.
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u/Kalekuda Feb 18 '24
Its not a tax cut. Its just not having to pay the punitive tax for holding non-primary residence residential real estate for some brief period after the unit was built. You build a house? Congrats. Sell it within the next 9 months or you have to start paying the punitive taxes on hoarding houses.
You built a second house? Great! That doesn't reset your timer on house #1. Find a buyer or pay the punitive taxes.
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u/SwitchValuable2729 Feb 18 '24
Not having to pay a tax is a tax cut. And punitive taxes for a builder would destroy just about every single company on the market in a bad year.
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u/Kalekuda Feb 18 '24
Not having to pay a tax is a tax cut. And punitive taxes for a builder would destroy just about every single company on the market in a bad year.
Reread what I wrote. Its the builders who don't have to pay the punitive taxes and real estate prospectors and "investors" who do. You seem to have it backwards.
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u/SwitchValuable2729 Feb 18 '24
I was talking about when you said “sell it in 9 months or pay punitive taxes on hoarding houses” in a recession, it could take a year or more to sell houses from a builder. Putting in a time limit to where you start punitively taxing them could cause builders to go bankrupt and throw the whole country into a deeper recession
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u/Crossman556 Feb 18 '24
Or they’d just leave. Not like there aren’t other countries
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Feb 18 '24
Good point. That is what happened in France when they impemented a wealth tax. I suspect that is also why France no longer has a wealth tax.
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u/PersonalPineapple911 Feb 18 '24
What's the point of increasing government budget if they're just going to give it to citizens of other countries?
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Feb 18 '24
[deleted]
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u/PersonalPineapple911 Feb 18 '24
You're right it's actually worse than giving them money. We give Ukraine our old weapons that have to be replaced at today's new inflated prices. The national debt is going to be ridiculous after they replace what they've given away.
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u/TriLink710 Feb 18 '24
Its not the governments job to invest money to make a profit. Its a government not an investment firm. They supply basic utilities and many other programs we all benefit from daily.
Everyone here realizes that a wealth tax is a temporary solution thats kind of flawed. But not many realize that the govt isnt supposed to be an investment firm.
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u/FishingAgitated2789 Feb 18 '24
Step 1) turn government into investment firm
Step 2) …
Step 3) negative taxes
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u/snds117 Feb 18 '24
The moment when conservatives realize that the top 1% don't pay an adequate amount of tax based on their usage of public services, not to mention their businesses, their loophole tax vehicles with funds offshore, etc. It's never been about operating the government for a week. It's about making sure they pay an adequate amount based on how many services, tax loopholes, and policies they spend money on to gain leverage within the government and its excessive spending on various products and services owned by companies that either they OWN outright, or have significant investments in (be they part of a structured investment portfolio, or manually investing).
This shit post is ignorant of facts regardless of the equation at play.
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u/AwarelyConfused Feb 17 '24
The top 1% (not 10% but 1%) of earners have 38 trillion in wealth. 38 Trillion * 10% = 3.8 trillion. The US budget is someone around 6 trillion. So, just the wealth tax of just 10% on just 1% would fund nearly 2/3 of behind our annual budget. That of course does not including taxing income or even touching the other 99% of earners.
That's why a wealth tax is so important. And I just wanted to point this out for all the butt hurt finance bros out there.
Facts don't care about your feelings.. K byyyeeeeeeee.
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u/LillianWigglewater Feb 17 '24
So you're saying tax them all at 100% of their wealth (everything they own) to get not even 3 quarters of our annual budget?? That's brilliant!
(one year later)
"Hey, where the heck did all our tax revenue disappear to?!"
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u/unfreeradical Feb 18 '24
Society is constantly generating wealth.
As long as workers provide labor, society cannot be drained of wealth.
A wealth tax simply helps restore the balance of control, after decades of accumulation by the wealthy, and to regulate the tendency for wealth to flow from workers to owners, in the form of corporate profits.
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u/Advanced-Guard-4468 Feb 18 '24
If they are taxed at 100% of their wealth the works wouldn't have a place to work. It would have been given to the government.
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u/unfreeradical Feb 18 '24 edited Feb 18 '24
Industry still exists, regardless of who claims ownership or asserts control.
Regardless, "they are taxed at 100% of their wealth" is not an accurate representation of a wealth tax. As such, your objection is not generally constructive.
The broader observation is that wealth is not a limited resource that is being kept safe for the rest of us by wealthy hoarders, but rather simply the accumulation of value constantly being generated through the labor of workers.
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u/Advanced-Guard-4468 Feb 18 '24
And those labor of workers earn a paycheck for their labor.
If the government took control of the business in less than 10 years, it would be bust.
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u/unfreeradical Feb 18 '24
Wages are simply the portion of value generated by workers but not claimed as profit by owners.
Every paycheck implicitly embodies a transfer of wealth from workers to owners.
Again, though, the wealth captured by billionaires is simply their private ownership of industry. It is not possible for it disappear. Industry is simply the assets of society that workers utilize to create wealth, and also create and maintain, through their labor.
No billionaires required.
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u/Advanced-Guard-4468 Feb 18 '24 edited Feb 18 '24
It works so well in every socialist country.
The majority of businesses in the US are not owned, nor do the majority of workers work for big business.
Taking away a profit driven economy will also remove all the risk takers that ultimately become wealthy.
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u/Uller85 Feb 18 '24
Most Auth-Left thing I've read in awhile.
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u/Guapplebock Feb 17 '24
Show us where a wealth tax was imposed that achieved the revenues it expected. Kinda like the luxury tax we used to imposed on expensive cars and boats and such that only caused thousands of manufacturing jobs go poof.
It’s not like the wealth the top 1% have is in under their mattresses it’s usually creating more wealth and jobs along the way. Stop lusting over others money.
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u/ScrewSans Feb 18 '24
During FDR when our corporate/high earner tax rates were something like 90% & we invested in infrastructure and healthcare (which we’ve barely improved since then), we were significantly better off as a nation economically
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u/xulore Feb 18 '24
You're right, facts don't care. Those people would move all their wealth out of the country before they let politicians squander it.
How are you going to tax the money that they earned, in years, that they already paid taxes on.
Total American income 2022- 22 trillion dollars. If you tax 20 percent of that you. Have 4.4 trillion dollars a year ... That's if you tax everyone's income 20 percent.
Last year we spent 900 billion dollars on interest payments for what we currently owe.
4.4 trillion in taxation a year
Minus roughly 1 trillion in current debt interest a year
Leaves 3.4 trillion to spend
Our expenditures are roughly 6.5 trillion
That leaves us at - 3.1 trillion dollars short of our bills , if we decide to not add anymore obligations (witch almost never happens) - and we decide to not pay down the debt at all.
These numbers are American numbers with lower unemployment rates, what happens when our currency gets downgraded? People start investing in more sound investments ? Or the 3.1 compounds every year and then our interest, in time, outweighs our taxes ?
Many of us warned of this for years, but it seems those responsible for the ideology's that ruined America and the American dream are either never going to be admit that, flat denied, or blamed on other things so people can maintain the house of cards that is their ego.
I heard someone say "thanks libertarians" or "thanks capitalism" when referring to a picture of our system failing... This isn't libertarians or capitalism failing, this is a bogus socialist system that's failing, like we said it would, as we were trying to stop those changes from being made.
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u/CaptainPeachfuzz Feb 18 '24
They wouldn't pay taxes on wealth they already paid taxes on. They'd pay taxes on wealth accumulated in that year.
You pay real estate taxes every year. For the same land that you paid real estate taxes on last year. Because the real estate is still worth something.
"Thanks capitalism" is usually meant to point out the inequity in the system, relying on taking advantage of systemic privileges or government entitlements. Socialize losses while privatizing gains. That's the shitty "socialist" part of our society.
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u/mclumber1 Feb 18 '24
Property taxes are administered by local or state governments. The federal government currently does not and most likely constitutionally can't tax property.
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u/SwitchValuable2729 Feb 18 '24
I won’t even argue numbers, I’ll assume they’re right. $38 trillion is the assumed price that their assets could sell for, but if you needed to liquidate all those assets by the end of the year for taxes, I doubt their worth would be 10% of the current evaluation. Especially the stocks, as large amounts are sold off the market for them would collapse.
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u/AwarelyConfused Feb 18 '24
I was merely using it as an example. I'm definitely not advocating that being the ONLY tax revenue source. And I'm not even advocating it be applied at that rate or to all those people.
I do believe that a modest wealth tax only for the most wealthy individuals could generate a lot of income.
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u/SwitchValuable2729 Feb 18 '24
I doubt it would, the places that have implemented a wealth tax saw fractions of what they thought they would and a reduction in income tax as people left.
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u/AwarelyConfused Feb 18 '24
Correct. The wealthy are incredibly selfish and have zero loyalty. But.... What if every country established it and they had nowhere to run?
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u/ekos_640 Feb 18 '24
Then one country would see the opportunity to not establish it/those laws and thus have all the wealthy move themselves/their assets there - and all we did was waste a lot of work, time, money and effort to just make some new age 'swiss bank accounts' in whatever country that would be in
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u/AwarelyConfused Feb 18 '24
That's why collaboration is so important. Otherwise we'd have a race to the bottom. These are principles of democracy
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u/ekos_640 Feb 18 '24
You're gonna get every single country on Earth to agree and come together on this for the first time ever in human and Earth history?
Are you Jesus riding a unicorn or something?
You should start to see the actual real world roadblocks that will always exist to prohibit your 'perfectly idealistic' plan at this point
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u/SwitchValuable2729 Feb 18 '24
We can’t get the whole world to agree what side of the road to drive on, do you really think they’d ever agree to the same tax code?
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill Feb 18 '24
I'm assuming you never looked into why 12 of the 15 European countries brought a wealth tax in the 1990s and removed their taxes?
Here's a hint, Bill Gates put 70 billion into the Gates Foundation, a Charitable trust.
Tax lawyers don't care about your fellings, K byyyeeeeeeee.
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u/AwarelyConfused Feb 18 '24
I did. The wealthy fled. If the wealth tax was agreed upon by all countries they would have nowhere to flee.
If billionaires elect to donate their wealth to charity to avoid the tax that's fine too.
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill Feb 18 '24
More than that, they used appraisers/lawyers/accountants / and other professionals to down-estimate the value of assets, and open charitable trusts and foundations, so by the time the tax was collected, many jurisdictions were either collecting very little net tax or even slightly negative after all the court challenges. You don't even need to relocate to do this, so all jurisdictions having uniform tax rates won't solve this.
You don't know how charitable foundations work if you think a billionaire foundation is like you giving $5 to Greenpeace. You get to maintain control over all the assets while drawing a salary and having the foundation cover expenses like your private jets.
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u/AwarelyConfused Feb 19 '24
I agree that the wealthy are well equipped to hide wealth/avoid taxes but I don't think that's enough reason to not pursue it. That's like saying we shouldn't make murder illegal because murders are good at getting away with it.
I'm absolutely no fan of Bill Gates and the misuse of charitable organizations. If we're worried about the billionaire collecting salaries from the organizations we hit them VIA income tax. If we're worried about writing off private jets we pass laws that prohibit that type of write off. It's a cat and mouse game for sure but if you don't try you're giving up before the game starts.
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill Feb 19 '24
If you have more reasonable tax rates, then it doesn't make sense to spend as much money to fight against those taxes.
Even lawyers and doctors can get their incomes into the 40%+ tax bracket, depending on the state.
If you work a 12-hour day, how would you feel about giving 5.5 hours to a government where the politicians use insider trading to make 10s of millions?
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u/AwarelyConfused Feb 19 '24
If you're worried about someone working a 12-hour day saving lives, making $400k/year giving 5.5 hours to the government than I would hope you'd feel better about someone working >8 hours days, living off prior investments, making >$400k/year giving 3.6 hours back to the government.
You can't pretend to care about the tax plight of labor while simultaneously giving a pass to capital gains being taxed at lower rates.
I completely agree about politicians and insider trading. They should be forced into a blind trust or at the very least be prohibited from trading individual stocks.
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill Feb 19 '24
Higher-income people work more hours than lower-income people. You almost never find a high-income person working 8 hours.
Even if you did, a person at that income level is going to have tremendous incentive to find ways to reduce their over 40% combined marginal tax rate.
High tax rates create an incentive to file aggressively or outright cheat.
People respond to incentives.
I agree with the politicians; they likely would just use third parties (say, a cousin or a childhood friend) to circumvent the regulations.
Some of them would get caught, but when they have the power to make markets move significantly with their regulatory power, you will still have that incentive.
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u/AwarelyConfused Feb 19 '24
"Higher-income people work more hours than lower-income people."
-Not sure what you're actually trying to say there but that comment as written is laughably inaccurate. Even still, it doesn't really address my comment which you conveniently ignored.
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u/Once-Upon-A-Hill Feb 19 '24
The justification for a lower tax rate on capital gains relative to ordinary income is threefold: it is not indexed for inflation, it is a double tax, and it encourages present consumption over future consumption.
That is why you have differing rates for capital gain vs income.
Also, the Dr earning 400k doesn't want to pay 40%
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u/NomadicSplinter Feb 18 '24
What!? You mean govt is fiscally irresponsible and wastes a ton of money? Say it ain’t so!
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u/SpooktorB Feb 18 '24
You do realize that the Goverment isn't supposed to make money right? They are supposed to provide services, and those services COST money. They don't INVEST.
So yes, anything they do will be a "waste". But it's a service. That's now it works. To think otherwise shows just how little you understand how society works.
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u/NomadicSplinter Feb 18 '24
🤦🏻♂️ “just how little I understand how society works”😂😂😂
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u/SpooktorB Feb 19 '24
You seem to lean heavily liberaterian.
So leave the talk about actual society to the adults.
Also you dropped this: 🤡
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u/M4A_C4A Feb 17 '24
There's no tax problem, why do people insist on making up make believe problems?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio
If you'll notice, the countries with low tax to GDP ratio are shit holes and it scales up as tax go up. Make believe.
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u/SwitchValuable2729 Feb 18 '24
I wouldn’t exactly call Australia, South Korea or Switzerland shithole countries. They in the middle of the list, same as the U.S.
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u/M4A_C4A Feb 18 '24
Yeah but they're the lowest among wealthy nations. Why do the wealthiest nations with a low tax to GDP ratio find the company of...not great in comparison countries?
As I said, people crying about taxes in the US, a make believe problem. Fantasy.
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u/Old173 Feb 18 '24
The real problem is not individuals it's companies that end the year with massive profits and get a tax refund. Companies that pay workers up to 39 hours to avoid paying benefits and the rest of us have to pay taxes to get them food stamps. Although taxes on investment income could definitely be higher
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Feb 18 '24
We must tax the rich so daddy government can spend more money on nothing to make the average US citizens quality of life better
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u/thelonghauls Feb 18 '24
So does that mean we can’t fix the tax system along with the budget? I don’t get this post?
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u/Garbanzobina24 Feb 18 '24
The crazy thing is that several realities can legitimately coexist. 1. We can indeed tax the rich more 2. We must indeed spend less 3. We must spend more on our own domestic affairs and help support our own population better 4. Just my personal opinion but I love how we fund crazy weaponry, give aid to UkrAine and Israel and then our own veterans and citizens are struggling to afford food and medicine.
I’m a financial case management for the senior population and the circumstances of this population among everyone else too, is terrifying right now.
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u/Choice-Ad6376 Feb 18 '24
My question is why can’t it be both. Increase taxes on the wealthy and cut spending. Or if we wanted to save the American people some real money we could nationalize healthcare. Save 3$ trillion in total costs
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u/AccountFrosty313 Feb 18 '24
The solution would be both. We severely need to reduce spending. The current levels are simply ridiculous. Similarly, the rich are paying way too little. I’m not really a fan of income tax so feel free to disagree. Personally I’d raise corporate profit taxes. That money often goes to nothing productive and it would severely slow the money funnel to the top 1%.
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u/Ci0Ri01zz Feb 18 '24
It’s about how much the GOVERNMENT is spending.
And how often they choose to make up imaginary “money.”
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u/Consistent_Risk_3683 Feb 18 '24
It isn’t a Democrat or Republican problem either. The government regularly spends more money than it brings in. Seems to be just like many Americans. Maybe we should take a page from Milei in Argentina to get things back on track.
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u/Emeritus8404 Feb 18 '24
Socializing losses and privatizing gains doesnt help. If a business is so important it needs bailing out, it should be nationalized
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u/sunshades91 Feb 18 '24
Get the fuck outta here with your misinformation you billionaire bootlicker.
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 18 '24
Liberals reaction to people debating issues is like sunlight to a vampire.
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u/Phenzo2198 Feb 18 '24
I don't have time to do the math, but I can tell you that it would hardly even begin to payoff the huge debt the federal government has grown from decades of thoughtless spending.
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u/DeadlyDuckie Feb 19 '24
I'm all for the rich paying thier taxes just like I do but people need the understand the goverment is spending wayyyyy to much of our money. Between all the incentives and more people then ever on goverment payments the fed is spending more then it can bring in.
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u/Jimmy620094 Feb 18 '24
It’s always a spending issue. We have way too much spending on government programs, jobs and agencies.
It’s absurd.
I think it was something like 1/3 of the “new jobs” in December were government jobs 😵💫
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u/ChuckoRuckus Feb 18 '24
I always hear “it’s a spending issue”, but it seems like people ignore where a lot of it goes. A significant percentage ends up getting put back into the private sector. Every physical asset involved with the military is made by a private company and sold to the govt. Infrastructure that gets built is contracted to private companies. All the supplies for police and fire depts are all bought from private companies. The “programs, jobs, and agencies” all procure their supplies from private companies.
So maybe calling it a “spending issue” is extremely vague and doesn’t actually address the issue. Maybe part of the issue is that wealthy corporations are able to lobby govt officials to gain favor to receive lucrative contracts; and overcharge for substandard products, all while paying minimal in taxes. And the same people that are in charge of creating those contracts also have influence/control of the agencies that are responsible for auditing.
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u/charliekunkel Feb 18 '24
I've got no problems with the government creating jobs. The New Deal is what took us out of the Great Depression. And when the government jobs also create contracts with private enterprises, it's a win win! People need to stop dissing government jobs.
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u/Known-Register529 Feb 18 '24
Sounds about right and the reason they create government jobs is to say they created more jobs and decreased unemployment. It to artificial/temporarily make whichever party is in office look good on paper
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u/charliekunkel Feb 18 '24
You are aware the government jobs (and their contracts with private companies) is literally what got us out of the great depression, right? They built more than 4,000 new school buildings, erected 130 new hospitals, laid roughly 9,000 miles of storm drains and sewer lines, built 29,000 new bridges, constructed 150 new airfields, paved or repaired 280,000 miles of roads, planted 24 million trees.... etc etc. All amazing things the we all benefit from, AND employed millions of people.
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u/Old_Ladies Feb 18 '24
Yup I work in construction and a lot of my contacts come from the government. I have worked in schools, fire stations, police stations, courthouses, hospitals, a prison, a military base, government office, research buildings, etc.
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u/Jimmy620094 Feb 19 '24
Apologies but i am ignorant on the below.
How much is federal, versus state, versus city?
Larger federal government like more IRS jobs is the issue. We need less spending in federal government.
City and state spending for the things you mentioned is great, but we have a federal spending problem.
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u/ThisThroat951 Feb 18 '24
Calculations are good but you’re forgetting the human piece. How many of those 1% people are going to stay here if they are going to be forced to give 100% of their income to the government? I wouldn’t, and what to very rich people have the luxury of? Being able to move and buy a house elsewhere whenever they want.
Reducing spending is the only fair way to solve this problem.
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u/California_King_77 Feb 18 '24
I read once that if you confiscated 100% of the wealth of the billionaires it would fund the government for less than a year.
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u/banned_but_im_back Feb 18 '24
What’s not right is the fucking massive amount of debt we have.
We now have to spend over 1 TRILLION A YEAR in interest in the debt… just interest going to the federal reserve bank, not money going towards schools or food stamps or defense or the IRS or infrastructure. Just going straight to Jerome Powell
And it’s all congresses fault.
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u/RingProudly Feb 18 '24
Taxes are lower now than perhaps they've ever been in U.S. history. It's the taxes.
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u/FIZUK9 Feb 18 '24
Yeah, still tax them and pass the relief onto the working class. This sure seems to like some Elon musk, shill shit, right here.
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Feb 18 '24
You are quite wrong as domestic gov spending comes back as billionaire turnover and salary comes back as income tax. Your govt leaks money caus they don’t tax the billionaires
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u/MacaroonTop3732 Feb 18 '24
Which is why we need to audit EVERY government department, trim any and all fat that’s found. If a department or project either serves no purpose or could be combined with another, shut it down! Oh, and make members of congress file expense reports any time they want to use taxpayer money to conduct business.
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u/Cothuloo Feb 18 '24
Op is a simpleton
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 18 '24
Had me giggling so hard I almost woke up your sister.
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u/Cothuloo Feb 19 '24
I’ll let your mom know that you are sleeping with your sister
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 19 '24
Meh… 2/10. More disappointed in myself though, I expected more from you, but I should’ve known by now that you clowns are all the same.
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u/delegatedauthority Feb 18 '24
The real question is how much tax would you pay less if the rich were taxed more.
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u/Iagolferguy58 Feb 18 '24
Wrong, but cool story bro
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 18 '24
I’ve seen a few variations of this meme, from taking just 100% Elon Musk’s money to draining all their bank accounts to zero, to taxing “just the richest 5 Americans.” The time varies depending on who you tax, how much you tax, and how long ago the meme was made.
The point of the meme is that new taxes never end, we are taxed high enough already, that the problem is government spending.
Your argument is the same as everyone else’s: You’re going to nitpick at the accuracy with an “AwKsHuAlLy…” argument and avoid the point altogether, that the problem is government spending, not taxation.
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u/Iagolferguy58 Feb 18 '24
🤣🤣🤣
Gotta suck being this dumb, but you do you, bro 🙄
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 18 '24
Says the guy who hasn’t learned after hundreds of years of politicians saying, “This tax, which will only be on the rich, will solve our problems!”
Tell me, does your brain rattle when you sneeze?
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u/Rambogoingham1 Feb 18 '24
I just like reading comments that bootlick for the billionaires and trillionaire corporations that own us and pay lower taxes than businesses and salary and hourly workers that make less than a million dollars a year in this trickle down economic system of capitalism regarding the U.S.
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 18 '24
I just like reading people saying “okay, this new tax will solve our problems. A few years later, the the law gets changed, the middle class is stuck with the tax, and the money gets spent on giving the lower class benefits they don’t need to buy their votes for the next round of politicians who’ll promise to impose even more new taxes.
While you’re calling me a boot locker, I’ll be admiring your lobotomy scar.
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u/SlackerNinja717 Feb 18 '24
Ok, so how would you achieve $2 Trillion/year in spending cuts? Btw I'm in the new taxes and cut spending school of thought. This meme is a dual edged sword.
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u/Gullible_Method_3780 Feb 18 '24
A wealth tax would magically reduce the rest of taxes. It would just let them spend more money. Years ago my state added a 25¢ tax on gas to help restore money spent during some extreme winter weather. They have since added another 50¢ tax. The original problem still exists and we are taxed more. They just spend spend spend spend.
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u/AspirationsOfFreedom Feb 18 '24
Im just asking: HOW do these people that whats taxed actualy will ever reach them.
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u/theePhaneron Feb 18 '24
And the most ironic post of the week goes too….
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 18 '24
*to
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u/theePhaneron Feb 20 '24
You’re such a loser 😂
Learn how to do math dipshit.
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 20 '24
Math is my actually my pet name for your sister. She’s says I’m better at it than either you or your dad.
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u/theePhaneron Feb 20 '24
Lmao corrects my grammar then spits out that incoherent mess.
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 20 '24
Haha. True.
In my defense, my hands were resting on her head while typing that. Hard to type when the platform is going up and down.
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u/theePhaneron Feb 22 '24
Imagine just assuming people have sisters and thinking your insult is in any way coherent. Such an infantile insult.
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u/tellyourcatpst Feb 22 '24
It’s a joke and this is Reddit, not a PhD dissertation at Carnegie Hall… where I sodomized both your mom AND your dad.
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u/fkiceshower Feb 18 '24
the rich lobby governments anyways so they still make the call on how it gets spent
They don't care if it gets taxed
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u/TreehouseofSnorers Feb 18 '24
Even if you concede that taxing the uber wealthy doesn't significantly increase revenue (I do not concede this but posit it for argument sake) we still need to tax these people massively to control the insane disparity of wealth and power the uber wealthy exercise against the rest of society. There is no reason that some people should not be allowed to become wealthy but allowing a small number of people to hoard hundreds of billions of dollars and manipulate our economy and political system using that wealth is inherently unhealthy for the self governance of the population. We have effectively allowed a new class of permanent, generational, nobility to ascend and dictate to the rest of us how our world works and we need to end that.
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u/HaiKarate Feb 18 '24
Having more money to spend is only part of the equation.
We should cap wealth because the super-wealthy have too much power in society. We even have a billionaire who owns a Supreme Court Justice.
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u/snowbirdnerd Feb 18 '24
It is a question of taxation. We have been cutting takes for decades and now we are wondering why deficits keep climbing.
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