How convenient that your analysis elides debt servicing from war and increased discretionary military spending. Debt rose the most under Reagan and Bush and now Trump with the same call for cutting taxes while bloating military spending. And let's not forget the TARP and other bailouts in 2008. But by all means, talk about "corrective market forces that curb waste" -- tell me, when has any government in history been run by "market forces"?
That the highest earners pay the most taxes in nominal terms should not be a surprise, it's just basic math. 10% of $1B is still more than 20% of $1M. These self-annointed elites are still hoarding an incredible amount of wealth, with average tax rates that are often more lower than lower income brackets. Yet, they consume more services than lower income people.
Social Security is more than 90% funded by payroll taxes collected exclusively for that purpose. Combining that budget item with HHS and other departments funded by more general income taxes is quite misleading. Defense is the largest single expenditure in the US budget -- even more so when factoring in the VA.
Finally, more dollars can always be printed because the US dollar holds the highly privileged position of being the "world's currency", and exploiting the benefits from that, such as printing a near-endless supply of USD without causing a gallon of milk to cost $1500 (yet).
Numbers aside, you seem to suggest that The Free Market could correct our path to fascism, and that pesky human services and wanton over-regulation are what are really preventing us from reaching our final enlightened form... We are all much closer to being destitute than we are to being next in line for billionaire-dom. "It's a big club, and you ain't in it."
> you seem to suggest that The Free Market could correct our path to fascism, and that pesky human services and wanton over-regulation are what are really preventing us from reaching our final enlightened form...
Not quite. I am merely pointing out that capitalism and free markets are not the enemy and that larger, more involved governments, which the political left (to which I'd assign the author) support, are a perfect breeding ground for sleaze, corruption and nepotism. This effect btw. can be observed in all of the states in which socialism has been tried. Each and every time, without exception, citizens are fleeing from these countries into capitalist countries and it's never the other way round.
In those other socialist-leaning nations the spending is there just hidden in the form of jobs. A much higher percentage of labor is governmental -- usually around 25% more.
The US can get away with what it's doing because we just have that much more productive economic activity going on here.
Reminder that the Republican policy for the last 40 years includes things like starve the beast in order to build up/support inefficient government spending so that they can make exactly this argument.
When one party is ACTIVELY sabotaging the Federal government in order to achieve political goals they can't get at the ballot box, and in order to set the grounds to make exactly the argument you are, we have to wonder, what exactly is the solution? Is it to do the thing we were manipulated to be forced to do, or to throw out the party that cared more about their goals than our country, are willing to destroy our government's ability to govern, and are willing to spend 40 years being manipulative to achieve it? I say throw out the part that intentionally spent 40 years destabilizing our government and TRYING to deliver worse outcomes.
spopejoy|22 hours ago
unknown|1 day ago
[deleted]
musicsnob|1 day ago
Social Security is more than 90% funded by payroll taxes collected exclusively for that purpose. Combining that budget item with HHS and other departments funded by more general income taxes is quite misleading. Defense is the largest single expenditure in the US budget -- even more so when factoring in the VA.
Finally, more dollars can always be printed because the US dollar holds the highly privileged position of being the "world's currency", and exploiting the benefits from that, such as printing a near-endless supply of USD without causing a gallon of milk to cost $1500 (yet).
Numbers aside, you seem to suggest that The Free Market could correct our path to fascism, and that pesky human services and wanton over-regulation are what are really preventing us from reaching our final enlightened form... We are all much closer to being destitute than we are to being next in line for billionaire-dom. "It's a big club, and you ain't in it."
rsp1984|14 hours ago
Not quite. I am merely pointing out that capitalism and free markets are not the enemy and that larger, more involved governments, which the political left (to which I'd assign the author) support, are a perfect breeding ground for sleaze, corruption and nepotism. This effect btw. can be observed in all of the states in which socialism has been tried. Each and every time, without exception, citizens are fleeing from these countries into capitalist countries and it's never the other way round.
busterarm|1 day ago
The US can get away with what it's doing because we just have that much more productive economic activity going on here.
_DeadFred_|1 day ago
When one party is ACTIVELY sabotaging the Federal government in order to achieve political goals they can't get at the ballot box, and in order to set the grounds to make exactly the argument you are, we have to wonder, what exactly is the solution? Is it to do the thing we were manipulated to be forced to do, or to throw out the party that cared more about their goals than our country, are willing to destroy our government's ability to govern, and are willing to spend 40 years being manipulative to achieve it? I say throw out the part that intentionally spent 40 years destabilizing our government and TRYING to deliver worse outcomes.