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Everything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate."
] |
>
Yeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi."
] |
>
Anecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.
I pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much"
] |
>
republicon platform:
Never have any solutions only complaints and criticism.
Block anything and everything the Democrats try to do.
Never take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.
Do everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.
Take credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America."
] |
>
It's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it."
] |
>
The dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.
They’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
It’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!
When they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).
Then when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.
Not only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.
This backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.
A half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.
Tax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.
Since then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.
Not only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.
Even as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.
Trump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.
By 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.
Middle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.
One of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.
In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.
Meanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.
As the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.
The biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.
Hence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.
This means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.
So, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.
Both are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.
What should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions."
] |
>
No no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy."
] |
>
Bush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?"
] |
>
Of course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting "I did that" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the "hard times create strong men" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts"
] |
>
One missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.
70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.
The result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.
There's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.
US has 700 overseas military bases.
US has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.
US has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.
As we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.
US military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.
Cut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners."
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As we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.
This is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created."
] |
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Nah, commenter was talking out his ass.
Congress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back."
] |
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A lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch."
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Truth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork"
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All while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals."
] |
>
Yes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election."
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We all taste the piss. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics"
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Cut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.
Complain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.
Tell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss."
] |
>
Pass "budget neutral" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back."
] |
>
Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.
That's a good observation. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire."
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It’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation."
] |
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I guess all that’s left are pitchforks?
Not to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road"
] |
>
Their overall tax rate was only 23%.
This part really grinds my gears.
My wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment."
] |
>
“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them."
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"...and neither will our headline." | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article"
] |
>
I remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\""
] |
>
Of course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off."
] |
>
Republican theology:
-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns
-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts
-Repeat
Then one of two things happens:
1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out
2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals."
] |
>
Republicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job"
] |
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An absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos"
] |
>
Trump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?"
] |
>
Because it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that."
] |
>
Beats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic"
] |
>
Unfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.
Any change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil.
I don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf."
] |
>
I know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income). | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics."
] |
>
it's because of overdraft fees, isn't it? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income)."
] |
>
Was it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?"
] |
>
Citizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?"
] |
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Funding the geopolitical whims of the elite? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering."
] |
>
Tax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.
The ironic part of MAGA is that the "Making America Great Again" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?"
] |
>
We know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the "F" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits."
] |
>
We know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the "F" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born."
] |
>
And neither is the MSM. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born."
] |
>
It's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM."
] |
>
"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase."
Always amazes me how republicans are blind to this... | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did."
] |
>
The debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this..."
] |
>
Here’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy."
] |
>
Notice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills."
] |
>
So tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.
How do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels?
Has anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just "try it for a year"? What if we did that... said "hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see." I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?"
] |
>
Bipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.) | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result."
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Anyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)"
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How is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad
PATHETIC | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost."
] |
>
The idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:
“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”
Then it’s:
“Why are so many people needing handouts??”
It’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government.
There’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC"
] |
>
We should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!
Our rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity."
] |
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I heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what???? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in."
] |
>
As soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.
That's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????"
] |
>
There's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas.
Republicans: Haha! So true!
We need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways.
Republicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?! | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap."
] |
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800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!"
] |
>
They didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer."
] |
>
Obviously it’s the democrats fault /s | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?"
] |
>
If folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s"
] |
>
... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live."
] |
>
McCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said "this government" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.
2019: 22,719T
2020: 27,748T
2021: 29,617T
2022: 30, 824T
So if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work."
] |
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Right, the tax cuts for the rich | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks."
] |
>
28% was acquired under Trump | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich"
] |
>
I love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump"
] |
>
Spoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s"
] |
>
They're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.' | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems."
] |
>
From all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget.
Now, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy.
Keep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'"
] |
>
Too many candles | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits."
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The obvious solution | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles"
] |
>
There's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP.
All the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind.
(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets) | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution"
] |
>
all of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)"
] |
>
My uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much.
That’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much"
] |
>
Most Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration"
] |
>
SWAN: "I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that." | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage."
] |
>
It’s avocado toast…It must be. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\""
] |
>
Republicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be."
] |
>
Trumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia."
] |
>
Let’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible."
] |
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“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”
Ron “says woke a lot” DeSantis | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain."
] |
>
What about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.
$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.
Fuck your $30T... | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis"
] |
>
whatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T..."
] |
>
And, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump"
] |
>
Regan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.
This trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend."
] |
>
Trumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term! | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron."
] |
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The party of "fiscal responsibility" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already! | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!"
] |
>
They're scum | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!"
] |
>
Of course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum"
] |
>
For all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats."
] |
>
I mean does anyone really care about the national debt? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers."
] |
>
Does it start with "tax" and end with "cuts for the wealthy"?
Or maybe it's a multi-pronged problem that includes the above and something that start with "military" and ends with "industrial complex"? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers.",
">\n\nI mean does anyone really care about the national debt?"
] |
>
Republican fiscal policy is massive tax cuts for the rich while telling everyone to get real excited about the trickle down they know is nothing but a joke.
It really is amazing how they are able to con so many people, including the media, with their bs. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers.",
">\n\nI mean does anyone really care about the national debt?",
">\n\nDoes it start with \"tax\" and end with \"cuts for the wealthy\"?\nOr maybe it's a multi-pronged problem that includes the above and something that start with \"military\" and ends with \"industrial complex\"?"
] |
>
why would they when no one holds them accountable for what they say on TV? they will get on Fox News and blame it on Hunter Biden’s dick, and everyone will nod in agreement. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers.",
">\n\nI mean does anyone really care about the national debt?",
">\n\nDoes it start with \"tax\" and end with \"cuts for the wealthy\"?\nOr maybe it's a multi-pronged problem that includes the above and something that start with \"military\" and ends with \"industrial complex\"?",
">\n\nRepublican fiscal policy is massive tax cuts for the rich while telling everyone to get real excited about the trickle down they know is nothing but a joke.\nIt really is amazing how they are able to con so many people, including the media, with their bs."
] |
>
What is really sad in politics today is that the politicians that at center/left are more fiscally conservative than the political right.
The political right just throws money all over the place subsidizing all of the fat cats and calling I’d business, rather than socialism, subsidies and handouts for the rich. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers.",
">\n\nI mean does anyone really care about the national debt?",
">\n\nDoes it start with \"tax\" and end with \"cuts for the wealthy\"?\nOr maybe it's a multi-pronged problem that includes the above and something that start with \"military\" and ends with \"industrial complex\"?",
">\n\nRepublican fiscal policy is massive tax cuts for the rich while telling everyone to get real excited about the trickle down they know is nothing but a joke.\nIt really is amazing how they are able to con so many people, including the media, with their bs.",
">\n\nwhy would they when no one holds them accountable for what they say on TV? they will get on Fox News and blame it on Hunter Biden’s dick, and everyone will nod in agreement."
] |
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for-profit war, for-profit health care, tax cuts for the rich...it ain't that complicated...? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers.",
">\n\nI mean does anyone really care about the national debt?",
">\n\nDoes it start with \"tax\" and end with \"cuts for the wealthy\"?\nOr maybe it's a multi-pronged problem that includes the above and something that start with \"military\" and ends with \"industrial complex\"?",
">\n\nRepublican fiscal policy is massive tax cuts for the rich while telling everyone to get real excited about the trickle down they know is nothing but a joke.\nIt really is amazing how they are able to con so many people, including the media, with their bs.",
">\n\nwhy would they when no one holds them accountable for what they say on TV? they will get on Fox News and blame it on Hunter Biden’s dick, and everyone will nod in agreement.",
">\n\nWhat is really sad in politics today is that the politicians that at center/left are more fiscally conservative than the political right. \nThe political right just throws money all over the place subsidizing all of the fat cats and calling I’d business, rather than socialism, subsidies and handouts for the rich."
] |
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Trump is responsible for 25 percent of the National debt. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers.",
">\n\nI mean does anyone really care about the national debt?",
">\n\nDoes it start with \"tax\" and end with \"cuts for the wealthy\"?\nOr maybe it's a multi-pronged problem that includes the above and something that start with \"military\" and ends with \"industrial complex\"?",
">\n\nRepublican fiscal policy is massive tax cuts for the rich while telling everyone to get real excited about the trickle down they know is nothing but a joke.\nIt really is amazing how they are able to con so many people, including the media, with their bs.",
">\n\nwhy would they when no one holds them accountable for what they say on TV? they will get on Fox News and blame it on Hunter Biden’s dick, and everyone will nod in agreement.",
">\n\nWhat is really sad in politics today is that the politicians that at center/left are more fiscally conservative than the political right. \nThe political right just throws money all over the place subsidizing all of the fat cats and calling I’d business, rather than socialism, subsidies and handouts for the rich.",
">\n\nfor-profit war, for-profit health care, tax cuts for the rich...it ain't that complicated...?"
] |
>
I’m sure it’s totally unrelated to our deficit spiking every time the Republicans cut taxes for rich people, right? | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers.",
">\n\nI mean does anyone really care about the national debt?",
">\n\nDoes it start with \"tax\" and end with \"cuts for the wealthy\"?\nOr maybe it's a multi-pronged problem that includes the above and something that start with \"military\" and ends with \"industrial complex\"?",
">\n\nRepublican fiscal policy is massive tax cuts for the rich while telling everyone to get real excited about the trickle down they know is nothing but a joke.\nIt really is amazing how they are able to con so many people, including the media, with their bs.",
">\n\nwhy would they when no one holds them accountable for what they say on TV? they will get on Fox News and blame it on Hunter Biden’s dick, and everyone will nod in agreement.",
">\n\nWhat is really sad in politics today is that the politicians that at center/left are more fiscally conservative than the political right. \nThe political right just throws money all over the place subsidizing all of the fat cats and calling I’d business, rather than socialism, subsidies and handouts for the rich.",
">\n\nfor-profit war, for-profit health care, tax cuts for the rich...it ain't that complicated...?",
">\n\nTrump is responsible for 25 percent of the National debt."
] |
>
But, they’re lie about it and their voting base will eat it up. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers.",
">\n\nI mean does anyone really care about the national debt?",
">\n\nDoes it start with \"tax\" and end with \"cuts for the wealthy\"?\nOr maybe it's a multi-pronged problem that includes the above and something that start with \"military\" and ends with \"industrial complex\"?",
">\n\nRepublican fiscal policy is massive tax cuts for the rich while telling everyone to get real excited about the trickle down they know is nothing but a joke.\nIt really is amazing how they are able to con so many people, including the media, with their bs.",
">\n\nwhy would they when no one holds them accountable for what they say on TV? they will get on Fox News and blame it on Hunter Biden’s dick, and everyone will nod in agreement.",
">\n\nWhat is really sad in politics today is that the politicians that at center/left are more fiscally conservative than the political right. \nThe political right just throws money all over the place subsidizing all of the fat cats and calling I’d business, rather than socialism, subsidies and handouts for the rich.",
">\n\nfor-profit war, for-profit health care, tax cuts for the rich...it ain't that complicated...?",
">\n\nTrump is responsible for 25 percent of the National debt.",
">\n\nI’m sure it’s totally unrelated to our deficit spiking every time the Republicans cut taxes for rich people, right?"
] |
>
Trump ran the debt up when he was in office. He even said I’m not worried I won’t be around to pay it off. Republicans seem to forget. | [
"Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr",
">\n\n\nDude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.\n\nI mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it.",
">\n\n\nThey are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..\n\nMy god yes, this is infuriating to me.",
">\n\nNever get angry because people were never taught something.\nBe angry it isn't taught.",
">\n\nThanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. \nI do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck.",
">\n\nOf course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced \"to drag\" along \"the confused\" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the \"No Child Left Behind\"?\nThe poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.\nHow do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?\nOne way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.\nI like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.\nHarrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nAnd George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.\n\nYou don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place.",
">\n\nI'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people.",
">\n\nThe Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.",
">\n\nThey were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath.",
">\n\nVery true. But the problem is this:\nHow many people read Axios?\nHow many people get their news from Fox \"News\"?\nThey were called out for it, but nobody knows. Unfortunately.",
">\n\nI dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years?",
">\n\n40 years. Since Reagan.",
">\n\nAnd when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.\nLucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history. Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean.",
">\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\nMainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other \"news debate\" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.\n*Typo",
">\n\n\nWouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.\n\nAnd at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias. But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe.",
">\n\nThe real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed.",
">\n\nAlmost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them.",
">\n\nLook, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise.",
">\n\nIn the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called \"Horse and Sparrow\" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows. The 1896 panic is the result of this model. \nHoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use \"trickle down\".\n\nThey didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.\n\n\nNationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)\n\nThen came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory. George H. W. Bush coined the term \"voodoo economics\" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.\nThe GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy. Unfortunately, do believe it to be so.",
">\n\nThe problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam.",
">\n\nWhile having taxpayers pay for the dam.",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention.",
">\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality. They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles. The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in. They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery. This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them.",
">\n\n\nDemocrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality\n\nI mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other.",
">\n\nBased on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden.",
">\n\nAnd wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness.",
">\n\nAre Xboxes \"woke\" or whatever the fuck, now?",
">\n\nWow.",
">\n\nThe people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. \nThe US is built for corporations, not for Americans.",
">\n\nIt has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. \nThe enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling.",
">\n\nRepublicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate",
">\n\nThat isn't really what they mean when they say \"great America\". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed.",
">\n\nI know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy",
">\n\nClinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.\nRepublicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control.",
">\n\nThey were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit.",
">\n\nFun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).\nIt's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful.",
">\n\nFaux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.\nPattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later.",
">\n\nShit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s?",
">\n\nThe founding fathers: no taxation without representation.\nNow the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time.",
">\n\nCan someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters?",
">\n\nThe issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. \nTrillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services.",
">\n\nWhat if the government just... didn't pay the interest? Somebody going to arrest them or something?",
">\n\nThat would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:\n1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)\n2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate.",
">\n\nEverything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi.",
">\n\nYeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much",
">\n\nAnecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.\nI pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America.",
">\n\nrepublicon platform:\nNever have any solutions only complaints and criticism.\nBlock anything and everything the Democrats try to do.\nNever take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.\nDo everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.\nTake credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it.",
">\n\nIt's easy if you aren't being lied to. Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic. All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt. The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions.",
">\n\nThe dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.\nThey’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.\nIt’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!\nWhen they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).\nThen when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.\nNot only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.\nThis backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.\nA half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\nSince then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.\nNot only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.\nEven as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.\nTrump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.\nBy 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.\nMiddle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.\nOne of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.\nIn the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\nMeanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.\nAs the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.\nThe biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.\nHence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\nThis means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.\nSo, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.\nBoth are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.\nWhat should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy.",
">\n\nNo no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people?",
">\n\nBush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts",
">\n\nOf course they're not, Trump contributed 35% of the debt! It's not surprising considering these are the same people that started putting \"I did that\" stickers on gas pumps in March of 2021, two whole months after Biden was in office. The ones that said housing prices going up is just normal market behavior under Trump, but when Biden got in its a catastrophe that's all his fault. You can go down the line. The Afghanistan withdrawal. The Mexico border. Opioid deaths. Covid. Problems don't exist when the Red team is in charge, but the sky is always falling when the Blue team is. For a group that loves the \"hard times create strong men\" line, they are the biggest bunch of sniveling whiners.",
">\n\nOne missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.\n70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending. SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.\nThe result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.\nThere's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it. We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending. The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.\nUS has 700 overseas military bases.\nUS has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.\nUS has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\nUS military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.\nCut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B. Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created.",
">\n\n\nAs we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.\n\nThis is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back.",
">\n\nNah, commenter was talking out his ass.\nCongress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again. Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch.",
">\n\nA lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork",
">\n\nTruth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals.",
">\n\nAll while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election.",
">\n\nYes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics",
">\n\nWe all taste the piss.",
">\n\n\nCut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.\nComplain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.\nTell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back.",
">\n\n\nPass \"budget neutral\" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire.",
">\n\n\nNow the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.\n\nThat's a good observation.",
">\n\nIt’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road",
">\n\nI guess all that’s left are pitchforks?\nNot to insinuate violence, just a fermenting sentiment.",
">\n\n\nTheir overall tax rate was only 23%.\n\nThis part really grinds my gears.\nMy wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them.",
">\n\n“The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article",
">\n\n\"...and neither will our headline.\"",
">\n\nI remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.",
">\n\nOf course not, they are mostly lying scumfuck criminals.",
">\n\nRepublican theology:\n-Repub rich donors give some tax cut money to Republican campaigns\n-Repubs get elected and give rich huge new tax cuts\n-Repeat\nThen one of two things happens:\n1)Medicare and Social Security are wiped out\n2)US economy and dollar implode; everyone loses their job",
">\n\nRepublicans aren't going to do anything beneficial for our country. That's the point of being a Republican. Just run the country into the ground and then profit from the chaos",
">\n\nAn absurdly large defense budget? Ballooning military spending? Failure to establish a sane tax structure? Cutting more loopholes in tax laws and other regulations than Swiss cheese, all to benefit corporate interests?",
">\n\nTrump claiming the best economic.y ever while running a trillion plus a year debt... no one seemed to call him out on that.",
">\n\nBecause it doesn't matter if you said it or not - the people who care aren't the ones we were trying to persuade with logic",
">\n\nBeats focusing on the size of his hands or how much he played golf.",
">\n\nUnfortunately, the disparity is too great, and the top 10%/1% are too powerful.\nAny change will be met with severe astroturfing, propaganda, and cause more turmoil. \nI don’t have the solution, but we’ve already seen the power of money in politics.",
">\n\nI know we’d get back about 2 Trillion if we taxed the rich fairly (a percentage of their income).",
">\n\nit's because of overdraft fees, isn't it?",
">\n\nWas it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?",
">\n\nCitizens United. Military Spending. Medicare Fraud (including prescription drug prices) and other fraud like PPP fraud. All are correctable - nothing will change as there’s no Congressional mandate because we can’t get rid of them due to gerrymandering.",
">\n\nFunding the geopolitical whims of the elite?",
">\n\n\nTax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.\n\nThe ironic part of MAGA is that the \"Making America Great Again\" is nostalgic for a time when taxes were high. Unfortunately back then it was easier to justify high taxes to racist whites by excluding minorities from any benefits.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nWe know the source of the debt, and we know who created a large portion of it. As always, they have their thumbs up their a$$es waiting for someone else to fix it so they can take credit for it. It was never coming out of their pockets, so why the \"F\" should they care other than to deflect on what they are going to do about it. The American taxpayer is done. Through and through. We work to the point of collapse, and they moan and groan we are not doing enough. We have no benefits, no fall back, no quality of life, no money, no savings, faced consistently with an ever crushing burden of debt created by the same people that created it, benefited off it and refuse to do anything about it other than assign blame. Currently, at a newborns first breath in life, they are automatically assigned a portion of this debt to pay off during their life. Right after they are assigned a Social Security number. They don't wait until you are old enough to work legally, they get you the moment you are born.",
">\n\nAnd neither is the MSM.",
">\n\nIt's not like Americans would listen or understand, even if they did.",
">\n\n\"In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.\"\nAlways amazes me how republicans are blind to this...",
">\n\nThe debt is because the GOP is a slave to the wealthy.",
">\n\nHere’s the thing. The debt doesn’t matter. This isn’t your household debt. This is bonds issued by the people who have a money printer. This is twisted so that regular people think the govt is gonna come rob them to pay it’s bills.",
">\n\nNotice they only want budget cuts when a Democrat is in the White House?",
">\n\nSo tl;dr would be that since the richest people had their taxes cut so much, a lot of that extra money they saved went to Treasury Bonds. So not only does the government not get the money they cut in taxes, the government now takes on that money as debt to these rich people who are now entitled to whatever the interest is on that loan.\nHow do we stop that bleeding? Is it as simple as bringing the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans back to Eisenhower levels? \nHas anyone in Congress proposed a bill to just \"try it for a year\"? What if we did that... said \"hey we tried this trickle down thing for a couple decades and it really hasn't worked like Reagan promised. Lets try something else and just see.\" I mean its the whole doing the same thing and expecting a different result.",
">\n\nBipartisan refusal to claw back money illegally taken? Refusal to require repayment of every PPP loan to a business that also gave C-suite bonuses that year? A general culture of horse and sparrow/trickle down idiocy? Trump's tax cuts on top of it all? The morons who would rather force people out of the military than keep their contracts to disabled veterans (if they get less than honorable discharge, they lose medical care and retirement benefits. Cost cutting measures in the past have included using failure to meet physical training standards as a way to fire members of the military and deny them disability benefits.)",
">\n\nAnyone relying on Republicans for information is already lost.",
">\n\nHow is it that all the rich profit when our debt is so bad\nPATHETIC",
">\n\nThe idiocy of republicans is simple with acts like this:\n“Cut education costs and don’t offer financial help for going to college”\nThen it’s:\n“Why are so many people needing handouts??”\nIt’s almost like if you make peoples lives 10x harder, they need 10x help from the government. \nThere’s a reason a grand majority of educators and scientists are democrats… republicans just love attracting stupidity.",
">\n\nWe should not be favoring the rich while our country is in debt!\nOur rich should be contributing to our nation becoming out of debt and a better place to live and work in.",
">\n\nI heard today that people have been receiving smaller tax returns over the past 19 years because of Biden’s policies. I was like what????",
">\n\nAs soon as Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, national GDP soared while per capita income basically stagnated. Why? Because ending the gold standard enabled debt spending, and ALL THAT DEBT SPENDING goes to the top.\nThat's the real cause of the debt, and the wealth gap.",
">\n\nThere's a recession coming. Companies need to pull back. Fire people. Fire 10% of the company. Put people out on the streets before Christmas. \nRepublicans: Haha! So true! \nWe need to lower our deficit. We should raise taxes on the rich by 10-20%. They're paying lower taxes than everyone else anyways. \nRepublicans: NOOOOOOooooo!!!!! How will they pay their bills?!?!?!",
">\n\n800 billion per year military budget while veterans go homeless. That’s the answer.",
">\n\nThey didn't care about the debt when trump was president. I wonder why?",
">\n\nObviously it’s the democrats fault /s",
">\n\nIf folks only understood this one thing and nothing else about our economy, our country would be a much better place to live.",
">\n\n... and wealthy people's wealth should really make up a huge share of the difference, because they redistributed it from the middle class into their wealth hoarding vaults, redistribution of wealth is ok when it goes to rich people. Healthy capitalism at work.",
">\n\nMcCarthy got.om Face the Nation and said \"this government\" has increased the deficit by 30% over the last 4yrs. Casually side stepping that two of those were trump years. When he said it again he was fact checked but I looked deeper.\n2019: 22,719T\n2020: 27,748T\n2021: 29,617T\n2022: 30, 824T\nSo if I did my math right which is entirely possible I didn't that is a 26% increase from Trumps 2019 to 2022 total. Of which from his 2020 year as zero that means Biden has increased the debt by 9.97% in that time. So 61% of the debt McCarthy is trying to leverage came from trump. It's covid sure but it's just awful disingenuous to use that like he wasn't in the Congress at the time and sign off on these checks.",
">\n\nRight, the tax cuts for the rich",
">\n\n28% was acquired under Trump",
">\n\nI love when they equate it to home finances and running up your credit card bill... /s",
">\n\nSpoilers it’s even republicans are in office then blame it on dems.",
">\n\nThey're going to blame it on drag queens reading books to children. I don't know how, but 100% they're going to work that in their 'explanation.'",
">\n\nFrom all I’ve research the debt is almost a 50/50 split between sitting Presidents since Clinton left with a surplus budget. \nNow, republican tax cuts have perpetuated the debt, while that may be an easier fix. Lose the tax cuts to large corporations (who’ve made and are making record profits) and the wealthy. \nKeep the lower brackets where they are, but eliminating the tax cuts for households above $500K and large corporations will definitely help with the deficits.",
">\n\nToo many candles",
">\n\nThe obvious solution",
">\n\nThere's also something that Republicans won't tell you about the deficit: as a percentage of GDP, the deficit rate has remained fairly stable. Outside of the surplus years under Clinton, the Great Recession under Obama and the pandemic under Trump, since 1969 the US federal government reliably posts a budget deficit between 3-5% of that year's GDP. \nAll the saber rattling by deficit hawks is a numbers game. Of course the flat number is higher now. Everything is higher now. It's like how it's constantly easier for new movies to set all time box office records because ticket prices are higher than they've ever been, but when judging by number of tickets sold, it's highly unlikely any movie will ever beat Gone With the Wind. \n(Fun fact: the original Avatar is only 15th all time in ticket sales; GWtW sold more than twice as many tickets)",
">\n\nall of this seems to be lost on most people on both sides of the isle, but the debt means absolutely nothing. it has almost zero impact on us now or in the future, and it almost certainly never will. both sides use it as some political talking point but at the end of the day we are always going to run a deficit and it doesnt really mean that much",
">\n\nMy uncle worked in the secret service during the bush sr, Clinton and bush jr admins. He said they all loved when republicans got elected because they got a pay raise, and when democrats got elected they didn’t get as much. \nThat’s stuck with me since he told me that after Clinton’s inauguration",
">\n\nMost Americans don’t understand tax brackets at all. They think if we raised the tax rate at extremely high incomes then the entire income will be taxed at that percentage.",
">\n\nSWAN: \"I will remind you he promised to eliminate the national debt in eight years. He literally promised that.\"",
">\n\nIt’s avocado toast…It must be.",
">\n\nRepublicans I hear keep saying we need to cut funding to Ukraine, yet will be the first to accuse something of being communist. What fucking age do we live in? Ukraine will be free of Russia and if repubs don't like it, they can go live in Russia.",
">\n\nTrumps precious tax cuts which were ridiculous on their own, never mind the previous other huge republican handouts to the filthy rich thanks to Regan and Bush. Republicans are 100% responsible for ALL skyrocket debt. The last president to balance the budget was Clinton it has been a nose dive ever since with no progress to show the nation is advancing on a better path anytime soon. Endless wars plus endless tax cuts but the solution is punishing 99% to keep the 1% greed sated, which is impossible.",
">\n\nLet’s be honest, neither side would. It’s all a game to always play them against each other for their own gain.",
">\n\n“The woke real woke cause woke is woke the woke crt woke woke trans woke agenda”\nRon “says woke a lot” DeSantis",
">\n\nWhat about the $50Trillion stolen from American workers since the 1960's with the GOP squashing minimum wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.\n$50T is owed to us, but it all went to favorable earnings reports, and dividends, enabled by the GOP and their protection of corporate profits.\nFuck your $30T...",
">\n\nwhatever it is, hope it’s stickered with “I did that” with trump on it like at every pump",
">\n\nAnd, in the same period of time, how much did the wealth of the richest people grow? Asking for a friend.",
">\n\nRegan should be regarded as the worst thing to happen to this country, not worshipped.\nThis trend was largely started during his administration he was a financial moron.",
">\n\nTrumpty is accountable for a quarter of our nation debt and that was after just one term!",
">\n\nThe party of \"fiscal responsibility\" doesn't understand how simple math works. Tax the ultra wealthy already!",
">\n\nThey're scum",
">\n\nOf course not why would they, when they can lie and blame Democrats.",
">\n\nFor all their talk about individual rights and freedom, republicans want one common thing, and that’s to be ruled over. Whether by billionaires and elites or evangelical nonsense spewers.",
">\n\nI mean does anyone really care about the national debt?",
">\n\nDoes it start with \"tax\" and end with \"cuts for the wealthy\"?\nOr maybe it's a multi-pronged problem that includes the above and something that start with \"military\" and ends with \"industrial complex\"?",
">\n\nRepublican fiscal policy is massive tax cuts for the rich while telling everyone to get real excited about the trickle down they know is nothing but a joke.\nIt really is amazing how they are able to con so many people, including the media, with their bs.",
">\n\nwhy would they when no one holds them accountable for what they say on TV? they will get on Fox News and blame it on Hunter Biden’s dick, and everyone will nod in agreement.",
">\n\nWhat is really sad in politics today is that the politicians that at center/left are more fiscally conservative than the political right. \nThe political right just throws money all over the place subsidizing all of the fat cats and calling I’d business, rather than socialism, subsidies and handouts for the rich.",
">\n\nfor-profit war, for-profit health care, tax cuts for the rich...it ain't that complicated...?",
">\n\nTrump is responsible for 25 percent of the National debt.",
">\n\nI’m sure it’s totally unrelated to our deficit spiking every time the Republicans cut taxes for rich people, right?",
">\n\nBut, they’re lie about it and their voting base will eat it up."
] |
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