the weirdest part of this whole thing is the people who are against raising taxes to stop this are the ones who get fucked if it explodes.
the bezos, musk, zuckerbergs of the world could be taxed 50% and be more powerful than most countries for generations, literally the only fail case for them is dollar assets tanking or US role in the world eroding.
the taxes don't even matter, their companies is where all wealth actually settles, as dollars flow through consumers, to consumer goods which have profits tolled away by their high margin businesses.
I agree, the city of Florence tried this whole plan in the 1300s where the elite created consumption taxes as the way to fund everything (tarrifs and sales taxes etc etc). When the crisis happened and they lost the war to Lucca the peasants just rebelled and left leaving them with basically nothing and at the mercy of enemies and the world took until 1420s1430s until they were able to recover.
The adage Adam smith also noted “ for ever rich man there is 1000 poor and only the strong arm of the magistrate keeping them from his door”
“Democracy and taxes is asset protection for the rich…don’t skimp on the payments”. Brown university professor Mark Blythe 2013
right before the french revolution the crown was in debt up to its eyes and tried to tax the nobles, they refused, the tax was then put on the peasants and all the nobles got their head cut off.
I have a Trumper friend who says that those billionaires earned their money and it's un-American to take it from them. They say if we tax billionaires more that nobody will want to become a billionaire any more and innovation will stop.
This is all BS of course, but just letting yall know what some of these people are thinking.
Particularly because the billionaires are not innovative at all. They were just lucky and knew how to exploit the real innovators that worked for them.
I would disagree with your friends reason, after all I earn money and the government feels free to help itself to my earnings every two weeks (such concepts as a salary are incomprehensible to the billionaire set, of course). I even think that there should be a wealth tax that kicks in at a few hundred million of wealth, say in the 2-5 percent range. However, what generally actually happens with such a proposal is the billionaires hire hundreds of lawyers to write the wording of the law and then pay off the politicians to implement it and low and behold taxes at my income rate go up while they keep just about everything they had before. This is the danger with tax the rich proposals- they have far more resources than serfs like us and can make the rules whatever they want.
Hey you're preaching to the choir here. I have tried every argument to convince them taxing the rich is better. Heck, these companies don't even pay taxes, some of them!
We have heard this same story almost verbatim for about fifty years at this point.
Clearly, it simply does not matter, and the people that cry wolf about it have been consistently wrong for decades. At what point do we get to dismiss it as hogwash?
Which is why I look at this as a whole chicken vs egg argument.
Republicans whine about how the govt. trying to prop up labor markets via the social safety net only causes market issues, as if the market isn't already distorted by a fraction of the top 1% hoovering up a majority of the wealth.
Democrats argue the reason the government needs to get involved is because businesses treat workers like every other factor of production. From where I'm sitting, most employers aren't investing in human capital like 50-80 year ago.
Not itself the solution but part of the solution. You need to tax billionaires and companies fairly and the mega rich should spend down their assets. Invest their hordes of money into making things better for the public. Make ground breaking technology instead of incremental pieces of crap. We spend money on ai but why not figure out clean energy first? These things could have be done in a sensible way but we do them the dumb way instead?
The only way you get those billions is by doing the opposite of what you're asking them to do. The system rewards and selects for the exploitative practices that create billionaires: low labor costs, high prices for the consumer, etc. A wage ratio cap on businesses, Value Added Tax, and public support of journalism, a return to banning stock buy backs and Eisenhower's income tax rates, are needed to help the system select for the 'sensible' actions you're advocating.
“Successful” corporations who rely on their labor force being so underpaid they are a drain on taxes because their work force relies on public assistance are not successful by any means and should fail if they cannot appropriately pay their employees. We as a society should stop propping up these companies.
People literally can't wrap their heads around how big these numbers really are and HOW MUCH money this is. If you liquidated Jeff Bezos's entire net worth it would cover the 500 billion Social Security trust fund shortage in 2032 for six months. Not all of social security JUST the shortfall in the trust and for less than a year.
The most aggressive policies proposed would raise $500 billion annually. That's a lot of money but not enough to completely solve the problem by itself. Not to mention that while I don't personally think a wealth tax is unconstitutional, we have the Supreme Court that we have for the foreseeable future.
Rich people's wealth grow by 10+% per year. A 5% wealth tax is merely a 50% tax on annual gains. Problem solved and no one is getting any poorer than they were before. Only poorer than they expected to be.
If the constitution is your problem it is a problem you're choosing to have and then it is obviously not a crisis.
That and remove loopholes from the estate tax. It’s bad enough to have oligarchs run this country- when their kids start doing it we will see how corrosive the current system is.
Not sure if you noticed, but last year Donald Trump intimidated Intel into giving the federal government 10% of the company. That was precisely a 10% once-off wealth tax on all Intel shareholders (many of whom are not particularly wealthy). No constitutional change was needed. As far as I know they didn't change any laws and no billionaire left the country in response.
Because of decades of corporate tax cuts, their revenue as percent of GDP after Trump I was 1%, down from over 7% decades prior. Reinvestment back into companies (as opposed to distributions) among historic lows.
You’re right, you can’t tax out of the problem. But this is a ledger and the revenue side must be adjusted
>Reinvestment back into companies (as opposed to distributions) among historic lows
This sounds like something you made up. How is this getting measured?
It’s also not really a fair comparison to look at corporate tax revenues as a % of GDP. Not only has the number of corporations been shrinking over time, but depreciation has taken up a larger share of GDP too, both of which artificially lower what you’re measuring
The change in spending absolutely dwarfs the change in revenue. Revenue has basically universally gone up - with the only interruptions being recessions and the periods immediately following.
The government can get its spending under control by creating a society where the means of production are collectively owned instead of privatized.
Start with cutting military spending massively. There's no reason to be bombing foreign countries as much as we do. Then we won't have enemies that hate us, and our border could be better secured... So that's another big cut.
When the means of production are collectively owned instead of privatized for the profit of a few select individuals, we will all be better off. There's no reason for big banks to exist in an ideal society - they should all be credit unions, with strong worker unions to ensure that the workers are compensated well as they serve the credit union's owners. Worker co-ops should be the default model of business in most industries - prices are better at WinCo than Walmart, and their workers make more over time and are set up for retirement via owning the company. Every utility should be a consumer co-op or a municipal utility that can be held accountable by the voting public.
It won't solve everything overnight but will ensure there is better resource distribution and access among the general population, making federal government services and funding less necessary.
The only spending that needs to be "Under control" is the spending on corporate welfare. The amount of subsidies we give oil companies and such would more than balance the budget.
Quick Google search says "Hundreds to 700 billion each year." But hey, I just know how to read. Also, while I States oil and gas, the "And such" was including corporate subsidies that I don't care to begin to list, with Amazon alone getting $14.5 billion.
The working class that is anti-tax are the biggest morons out there. They gladly cut their own safety net and now they will have nothing. Any politician that mentions "saving the heartland" of America is a liar at this point. They have voted against their own self-interest for far too long to the point they would rather let go of the rope than be saved. Been saying this for at least a decade, get out of the Plains if you still can. There is no lifeline coming and your existence should be more important than roots or family.
They're too short-sighted, they view themselves as global giants in their own rights, not realising how much their power and authority is dependent on US hegemonic control. Frankly, look at the issues they run into in Europe, Europe would happily regulate the shit out of them or ban them from operating in European markets. However, US hegemonic power manages to stifle these efforts. With that gone, they'll have a very uncomfortable time of it.
I am a person who is against raising taxes. I will be absolutely fine, since I saw this coming years ago, and took precautions against it.
The reason why I am against raising taxes is because there is no guarantee debts will be paid. There is no guarantee more money will solve a spending problem. There is no guarantee overspending won’t get worse with more money.
If spending is done responsibly, of course I’d support providing more money. But it is not and doesn’t look like it’ll happen any time soon. So no more money from my end.
The capital gains tax is the boogeyman and rightfully so. Most of these guys raise capital by selling equity. You would have to raise taxes on capital gains which makes 401Ks largely useless cause you strip it's tax advantaged status. You'd have to balance this out which many people couldn't agree to.
It helps wealth inequality to tax billionaires 50%, not really the deficit. I think to tackle the deficit we may need a VAT like Europe, lower cost healthcare, SS reform, and higher taxes on those making above the median income, so like the "middle class wealthy".
Obama’s contribution ($8.85 trillion over 8 years) can at least be justified somewhat by the borrowing costs; during his term, monetary policy kept the FFR near 0.
Trump’s 2020 and Biden’s 2021 additions could also be partially justified; COVID was a massive shock and though we know there was a ton of waste and fraud, doing nothing was simply not possible, especially using policies that restricted economic activity and movement.
Even pre-COVID, Trump’s debt accumulation was at least mirroring Obama’s (averages ~$1 trillion a year), though the FFR was increasing steadily over this time, meaning it was a worse choice.
The latter half of Biden and the first year of Trump have been terrible for this. Complete ignorance of basic economic policy. In 15 months, Trump has added nearly $3 trillion. We’re likely to hit $40 trillion by October, and there is a world out there where Trump leaves office with close to $50 trillion in national debt (he’s pacing >$45 trillion).
GDP growth post COVID is 2.35 (0.75% SD). GDP post GFC is 2.27% (0.59%). GDP growth post-2001 recession until the GFC was 2.9% (but with nearly 1% SD).
I'll take your word for it, but the policy path was wildly different. It was 2.27% even with the amount of stimulus and with rates at zero until like 2016... you also have worsening demographic headwinds as time goes by. We were also well below estimates for potential GDP during that time period. That hasn't been the case with the covid recovery.
I’m not disputing that there are a lot of variables in play that explain part of the debt accumulation , and I did say that Obama was different than Biden/Trump.
But he certainly did add to it, and didn’t do anything to ease long run pressures.
He’s easily the best president since the 2000’s, but that’s not been a high bar.
I meant take your word for it since I am drunk at a bbq and on my phone. I am just of the belief that more aggresive policy during the time period was warranted, witg that context in mind even the covid recovery and spending was mostly a policy mistake of too aggressive policy. I agree with your general assessment, but the current period is imho a much more structural deficit problem than the response to any of the past three downturns.
Yet unemployment didn’t return to pre GFC levels until his last months in office. We really need to find better ways to define crisis because it’s clear that GDP just doesn’t work. Especially when financial services are included.
And GDP doesn’t work? It has like a 90% correlation with all other “happiness” or “quality of living” indices. It’s good enough.
Because the “unemployment was high for long periods of Obama) ignores the labor force participation rate settling mechanically lower (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART).
Because GDP includes a lot of financial services that don’t really reflect the health of the economy on "Main Street" if you will suffer that awful metaphor. Unemployment and underemployment are better measures of how the middle class and lower classes are doing.
Look at individual countries, the US being one. GDP is higher than it's ever been but life satisfaction has declined.
It might still be broadly true (though the correlation has always been much weaker once you get above middle income status), but there are clearly cases where it doesn't hold up as strongly as it used to at all.
We're talking about the US specifically here. If the correlation is observably breaking down there it's not really relevant whether it still holds up more broadly.
It is because presidents themselves don’t set budgets.
It also be important to look at what party controlled each facet of the government because a party controlling all three levels governs much differently then one that controls one or two facets
The recession technically ended in 2009, but the economy was still way below capacity for the first half of the 2010s. It was a long, slow recovery, and it took almost a decade to get the unemployment rate back down to pre-recession levels. I actually think there is a strong argument they under-borrowed during this period.
But I agree with your broader point. When conditions improve, borrowing does not go down and that's now pushed the country to crisis levels.
I’ve certainly seen that argument; my views on the spending were certainly shaped by the fact that I was in grad school 2009-2014, and there was a lot of debate about the efficacy of the bailouts (with some papers about whether bailed out firms performed better or worse). The broad consensus where I went was that they missed opportunities to spend more when needed, and tacked it on later. Essentially a Miss timing of spending.
I have far bigger complaints about Obama era policies (PPACA) than debt accumulations.
Also dont forget that Obama put the cost of the wars on the actual deficit. Bush was playing financial games and keeping the cost of the wars off the books.
If you take into account the cost of the wars under Bush, then Obama actually left office with a lower deficit than he started with.
>Waste/fraud was estimated at about 10% of the total $4.2 trillion.
I would lump all dollars that churches took to be fraudulent as well, since they don't pay into the tax system that provided this relief.
It also is pretty much 0 that anyone else will ever be charged with fraud over the PPP forgiveness that republicans mandated in order to pass the bill in the first place while taking out their own loans.
The money that went to congressmen and their shell companies alone was probably 10% - again, I would consider those requests fraudulent when they make (at the time) nearly 5x the salary of the average American worker just based on their public salary (not even getting into the other sources of income...).
Sorry, I'm being a little pedantic, and I know the above is my opinion on certain pieces of the larger issue with PPP and how it was handled long term... but even parroting 10% as a possibility seems extremely low. The bill was re-written in order to encourage taking a risk on fraud and hoping it was forgiven and forgotten about later - which it was.
Double how bad you think it is going to be, as Elon Musk has worked out how to dip his fingers in the pension pot with Space X going public.
Rules were changed so it would instantly be listed among the top-companies on the stock exchange, so all the pension funds which follow S&P 500, etc, have automatically bought into his company.. which he's used to buy out Tesla's bad debt right away, buying all those shitty Cyber Trucks and other Tesla's that he can't sell.
He's going to flip debt between the company's, report it as profit on the other side, and no-one is going to stop him as Trump won't let them. All this 'profit' is going to bring even more investment from the pension firms, until one day when there is simply no hiding any more that there is nothing there.
You'd better believe he's going to use that money invested in Space X, and any government contracts he can, to make absolutely huge deals with Tesla, so he hits those performance targets and receives, i think it was 1 Trillion wasn't it, that the board agreed to. That will be real money coming to him, in exchange for the mostly fictitious money he's announcing.
Those retirement pots will be utterly drained empty very soon, whilst still looking like they are full.
What is kind of wild is that this would feel like nonsense a year ago. Now? Plausible.
And for what? Why does the wealthiest man to ever exist want to do this? Either his on-paper wealth is much higher than what it would be in real world assets, or he wants people to suffer. Or both.
You don't have to invest in American index funds. I'm not saying sell everything, but I am saying stop buying American indexes. You can buy Canadian, European, Asian, Australian, developing countries, etc, and get the benefits of a diversified low cost ETF based portfolio without the poison pill Musk is forcing into the American indexes. American indexes are likely overvalued compared to the entire rest of the global economy anyway.
There is 16 million empty homes in the US and 600K homeless. There is plenty of supply.
The reason rent is high is speculation. Where I live there are hundreds of empty apartments and thousands of homeless people. The salaries do not support paying $3K for a studio apartment. Those who can afford 3K do not want a studio apartment and those who are willing to settle for that, cannot earn enough to pay 3K/month in rent.
The economy is out of balance and forcing both more homeless people and more empty homes.
This is such a misleading statistic: this 16M empty homes doesn’t take into account location. Places with the most jobs (e.g. urban centers) are also the places with the lowest supply of homes because building hasn’t kept pace. The only U.S. city that has successfully lowered or kept rent stable with inflation is Minneapolis, and the reason for that is because they’ve been building like crazy.
There are some cartel-esque characteristics in the rental market courtesy of AI platforms, but cities have been attempting to curtail that. Other things cities can do to lower prices is implement/raise vacancy taxes to incentivize landlords to find a renter for their unit, thus forcing them to lower prices to find a renter as soon as possible rather than leave the unit vacant until they find someone to pay their price.
That’s awesome, I’ve been learning how to farm regeneratively the past decade while I’ve been locked out of real estate, unable to help fix our food supply chain because of this kind of behavior.
Glad you are “hedging” though that’s really cool. What good are you doing with your money, though?
I think the bigger issue was the ever more negligent failure to raise taxes, fix healthcare, and pull in military spending as entitlement spending skyrocketed (and will continue to do so). The cuts and taxes that would have been painful 15 years ago will be apocalyptic in more 10 years.
And as much as I want government discretionary spending to be cut, DOGE was the "the gang cuts the federal deficit" approach.
Deficit can be balanced by returning the military budget back to 2016 levels, minor cuts in other programs, tax enforcement and loophole closure, and minor tax increases.
Military budget was 580 billion in 2016, so thats 400 billion saved.
A trillion is lost every year to tax evasion and loop holes.
So just those two things saves 1.4 trillion of the 1.9 trillion dollar deficit.
Increasing taxes by 10% generates 525 billion. Note I said 10%, not 10 points. Someone in the 22% tax bracket would only see it raised to 24%.
So now you're at 1.9 Trillion.
Any further savings from minor cuts in programs or tax increases now starts paying down the debt.
Republicans will not go this route though, they will use the debt crisis to destroy the social programs and safety nets and government protections & regulators they ideologically oppose.
But NAFTA hollowed out our manufacturing base! Who woulda thunk China would have set up thousands of companies/ factories in Mexico to build everything with no taxes / import fees to USA? Dumbest move EVER!!
Just learned this morning that the U.S. has over 50,000 troops, alone, in the Mid-east. I was shocked at that number! Why so many troops when we now have drone technology and high tech missiles...I mean really? America has a spending problem.
Don’t think so. Living in California at the time when CA’s real estate market took a major hit as Clinton made big cuts to that military budget. This was when I purchased my first home due to military cuts….got a good deal.
I also remember there were cuts to Welfare. Women could no longer just spit out a bunch of kids to collect welfare checks for each kid….etc.
Are you sure? Let’s do the analysis, using correlations (we can try a causal analysis, but if a correlation doesn’t exist, hard to argue for causal).
From 1966 to 2025, the correlation between debt as a percent of GDP and being a Democrat president is +0.29; or Dem presidents have higher debt to GDP. Correlation gets slightly less strong (0.28) when you eliminate post-2019.
It’s not a correlation worth talking about, but certainly the data don’t support the unconditional hypothesis.
I'm positive of it. Since I can't post images here, you will have to look at the table. This table shows debt as a function of GDP. The table starts in the 70s and stretches into 2025.
Debt is not bad as long as it is rising slower than the economy is growing. The table shows the percent of debt to the GDP. Higher the percent, the more that debt is in total dollars compared to GDP. And if the factor is greater then 100, it means the debt is now larger than GDP. the slope of the line shows whether the debt is escalating faster or slower compared to the GDP.
Look at the administrations we do see. The national debt was decreasing as a function of GDP for the 30+ years following WWII, including Carter. In 1981 Reagan took over, and you see a significant reversal of that trend on the way to tripling the national debt. He grew the economy, but he he the debt WAY faster.
In 1993, Clinton takes over, and again, you see a huge reduction of debt as a factor of GDP. And then Bush takes over, and it reverses again, and explodes at the end of his term as he ends up doubling the national debt. Obama takes over in 2009, and it definitely continues to rise fast but you can see the slope begin to decrease one year into his term. Trump takes over in 2017. And in 2020, blows it up quicker and higher than any admin in American History since WWII (and yes we had COVID, but one could easily argue it was his poor handling that lead to the massive spike, especially when you compare to the very next year when Biden takes over. Biden reversed the trend once again. The economy is growing faster than the debt, until Trump takes over in 2025. If the chart stretched into 2026, you would continue to see that line once again escalate.
So yes, Democrats do a better job growing the economy in comparison to national debt. They are better stewards of the economy, which is mainly driven by the middle class and small businesses. No wonder people trust them more.
“Rather, it appears that the Democratic edge stems mainly from more benign oil shocks, superior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term future.”
So, not sure I’d call all those policy wins, but it does exist.
Money is faith. At the end of the faith, people have not faith that Democrats will be good stewards of the economy. All you have to do is look at the last 3 GOP 2 term administrations. Reagan cut taxes and tripped the national debt, and ended with a recession. Bush cut taxes for the wealthy Party 2, doubled the national debt, and ended in recession. Trump is well on his way to make those two look like amateurs.
Meanwhile, the past 3 Democrat admin reduced debt as a function of GDP. Hmmm, I wonder why people have more faith in Democrats.... 🤔
Yeah, you might want to look again. I explained it better in this post and backed it up with the Feds own data: https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/s/vUeGRuC9PD
Your correlation argument is flawed because you’re correlating party affiliation against the absolute level of debt/GDP, which is a cumulative time-series variable shaped by inherited debt, prior administrations, wars, recessions, and external shocks. That tells you who happened to be in office when the debt level was high—not who caused it. It would be like blaming the number of stairs in a stairwell with whomever is standing on the highest stair.
A more meaningful way to evaluate stewardship is to measure the rate of change in debt-to-GDP, not the raw debt level. The equation is simple: (Debt/GDP at end of presidency − Debt/GDP at start) ÷ years in office. That gives the average annual change in debt/GDP. A positive number means debt grew faster than GDP (worsening fiscal trajectory); a negative number means GDP grew faster than debt (improving trajectory). That’s a much cleaner metric than your correlation because it measures what actually changed during an administration, instead of assigning blame based on inherited totals.
So if Republicans averaged, say, +3.2 debt/GDP points per year while Democrats averaged +0.8, that would mean Republican administrations historically increased the debt burden relative to GDP about 4x faster (which is accurate when you actually do the math). That’s a materially stronger analysis than saying “Democrat = 1” and correlating against a cumulative number that presidents inherit from previous administrations.
And zooming out, there’s a broader pattern your simple correlation ignores: major economic damage has repeatedly occurred near the end of Republican administrations—1990 (Bush Sr), 2001 and 2008 (Bush Jr), and 2020 (Trump). One instance could be coincidence; repeated instances suggest a pattern worth examining. That doesn’t automatically prove Republicans are worse economic stewards, but it absolutely means a single 0.29 correlation coefficient is nowhere near enough to make the sweeping claim you’re making.
Yep, that's why I used AI. My explanation wasn't getting across what I wanted to say. It's the rate of change which is more indicative of good stewardship of the economy, not who ends up at the top of the staircase...
I disagree about “doing nothing was simply not possible”. This is the sort of thinking that took us from 5 global banks being too big to fail, to now literally every F500 company being too big to fail. Biden literally bailed out billionaire and trillionaire VCs who banked at SVB even though the billionaires chose not to manage banking risk and actually caused the bank run. Doing nothing and allowing failure would have been the right move there as well.
At some point the free market needs to let the invisible hand crush those who take on massive risks and make irrational decisions. Right now, the more you take on risk, the better your returns are in every circumstance and the downside is blocked by the Fed put. That’s the sign of a manipulated and centrally planned market. Until the invisible hand is freed, the entirety of American “prosperity” is solely due to infinity govt debt and infinity consumer debt.
Someday the infinity won’t be infinity and then things will get ugly
Eh, that’s a bad way to look at things. You can borrow at low interest rate only temporarily since US always run a deficit, so the amount of debt will always be a thing thats going to affect and be affected by future interest rate.
The Covid loans in hindsight was fairly bad, because a huge portion of it just ended up being siphoned into people and institutions that made money through meme stocks and crypto. Now there’s a wealth glut at the top while most people are running out of money.
While the money stay at the top and haven’t flown back into investments, part of inflation from the COVID money is basically being pushed back. The problem here is depending on how the money get dispersed from the wealthy, it will cause different effects, and there’s no guarantee a major portion of it will trickle down to rest of the population.
We are basically in a pretty bad time of how the wealth is being dispersed atm - AI.
This investment not only does not create jobs, it actively destroy some high paying jobs, AND it competes for resources like water, electricity, and chips, which literally everyone else uses.
On top of that, remember these are money government borrowed, and the government is already considering cutting entitlements to sustain the loan and their interest while giving the wealthy a tax cut.
No, I pay attention to congress. I should be more accurate and call them Conservatives.
Democrats have not had a meaningful political majority in government since Obama. Republicans have played in open opposition to any measure that would put rails on this kind of overspending. Even when Democrats did have enough of a majority to affect any change in recent memory, they literally had to force through anything (which they also repeatedly failed to do, despite platforming on reigning in debt).
Now we are in this mess, that has been snowballing since the dotcom boom. It's a Nixon-Reagan wet-dream, and the ultimate outcome of Citizens United.
Cut spending I can kind of understand the argument, raise revenue you’re only getting through growth and taxes which is unlikely especially when the entire world was still trying to rebound since the pandemic officially ended in may of 23. Biden did try to pursue IRS enforcement as an attempt to raise revenue but losing the house killed that. Also, There were still large concerns about mutations and further complications. Just because the pandemic was over doesn’t mean it didn’t leave issues. Supply chains took years to normalize, requiring ongoing intervention. Healthcare system backlogs and staffing shortages persisted well into 2024. Mental health crises surged and required sustained funding. Small business recovery was uneven and needed continued support. Infrastructure that was deferred during the pandemic still needed addressing
If that number rises to 150% over the next 20 years, the same argument will be made, and we will wish for a return to today's debt levels. And yet living standards will probably be higher, as they are higher now than 20 years ago.
"Referred to as “crowding out,” increased borrowing by the federal government means less capital is available as investors buy federal debt rather than investing into private enterprises."
This is junk. Financial crowding out isn't real because loanable funds isn't real. Investment creates savings, savings do not constrain investment. Public sector spending increases the money supply, and it's those savings that get used to buy up treasuries. Yields are a function of policy.
So long the mainstream continues to ignore the stock flow consistency of sectoral balances and uses pretzel logic to believe that this is actually a positive correlation despite what your eyes are obviously telling you, then you'll all continue to be worried about about a doomsday event that will never come. Your kids haven't been sold out.
There will be no debt crisis. Interest rates are a policy choice, which means yields are a policy choice. The government determines it's own borrowing costs. It can even pick zero if it wants to.
Government debt is non-government savings. So part of the problem is in your bank account. If you truly believe the debt is an existential problem, then you should donate some of your savings and tell everyone you know to donate as well.
Trump isnt going to "leave office" because authoritarians dont leave. Trump will either die in office or be forcefully removed, there was no peaceful transition of power his first time around and its absolutely INSANE to think he would allow for a peaceful transition of power his 2nd time around after surrounding himself with loyalists. The world where Trump leaves office is the same place you can find flying pigs and unicorns.
Imagine believing this is hypothetical when he didnt leave office peacefully the first time. One of us have history backing our claim and it ain't you. . . . Your delusion of American Exceptionalism is what got us here.
But that while a measure of risk it has many other things in it as well. I’d say a more intelligent metric for the USA is capacity to pay back, what I mean is debt burden to tax take, plus a side of potential tax take( like congress could pass X law(they choose not too) but the could not create Swedish style tax in this environment(what is not possible due to cost) .
So just because the interest rate is rising doesn’t mean the USA is at risk of default. Yes it is a factor in the bond auction but you have many other factors mixed into that auction such as the buyer’s current portfolio, hell the fact the Md is going through hell so can’t actually sign off on cuz
The risk of default only happens when people loose faith in ability to be paid back. That is when the threshold of current year to year spending cannot service the debt, rather than debt to gdp
? Your analysis is the final sentence we sold out our kids. My view is no we haven’t it’s genuinely fine, congress just raises tax takes the recession on the chin and we in 10 years are in a better place.
The issue is the unwillingness to accept the party ended in 2008 and we are just socialising the Rich’s losses
Having read it I still don’t see the issue? It’s basically the same othadoxy that we are screwed and our kids are screwed because we need austerity. My view is we don’t it’s actually ok cos your borrowing against the world not against the us economy. And provided people belive congress could raises taxes then the debt can be any number it’s irrelevant what that number is because people will keep funding the USA.
Using Covid as an excuse to print roughly 40% of all the dollars ever printed is a choice I suppose. Let’s get this straight very little of any of this borrowing should be classified as justified. Everyone wants to cite Keynesian theory until it actually comes to paying back what you owe.
I think the biggest problem here is political- in a democracy its really hard to do long term (10-15 year) plans because of the election cycles without bipartisan support. And anything that actually fixes the problem long term (increased taxes on high earners/corporations, spending cuts etc) are never going to have bipartisan support at this point. So I dont see a way out, because its also not possible to fix the partisan divide without long term planning and popular supportanyway, which is also not going to happen.
Its gotten so out of hand that if US cut its military spending by 95 percent it would take about 45 years give or take to reign in the national debt....
It feels like Republicans are killing the golden goose and there's little we can do but watch in horror. I'm honestly not optimistic about a way out. Republicans will never support tax increases, and I'm skeptical Democrats would be willing add taxes in a way that would actually generate appreciative revenue. And unfortunately it'll be worse and worse the longer it's ignored.
The best way out might be for Democrats to support sneakier taxes that impact us less obviously? I don't know.
If I were elected president (I would never be elected) I'd:
Cut military spending maybe 15%
Raise income taxes at very high incomes to max rate of 77% (1964 level)
Remove step up basis for inheritance
Consider removing long-term capital gains rate, so all gains would be taxed at income tax level. But I'd be open to adding brackets like for income tax instead.
I know the last one would be very controversial, but it's the primary way the super wealthy are able to pay so much less in taxes (as a %). While the current capital gains tax discount does encourage stock investment, I don't see why stock investment should be encouraged any more than actual labor (ie income via income tax).
Maybe those would be enough to get us closer to at least a healthier deficit.
I understand your idea of 15% cut on military. However, it should be approached through contracts with the gov. Why are we funding SpaceX with our tax dollars? Or why continue the cap on social security when billionaires stop contributing within days of the new year?
Edit: To the replies, you can base it off "hostility" towards SpaceX or Elon but look at Nasa budget over the years and contracts handed out. The money we are paying in taxes go towards the contracts, between cutting funding and various methods the money is then handed out to companies (SpaceX). Sure, SpaceX can do it cheaper but think of it as quality versus quantity. SpaceX is doing multiple runs but hasn't exceeded past ISS, which is in low orbit. All I am saying, we see it time and time again that XYX company provides said part at a price thats ridiculous because they state the Gov needs it, they influence congress with money in some form for the agency to buy product. Those said items then are not needed because its cheap, over inflated part that the government then has to look for a new supplier. Repeat.
I don't really grok your "Edit" argument. Both the US government and most of the private sector worldwide book launches of their satellites by SpaceX because they are both cheap and have a lot of payload capacity available.
"but hasn't exceeded past ISS, which is in low orbit."
Yes, but how much demand is for higher orbits? Not much. The vast majority of satellites are on LEO. The market corresponds to the demand here.
Part of NASA is research. Everything SpaceX does is private. The value of NASA is the public domain research and technology. Tax where the money is (wealth) and cut where the bloat is (defense and corporate welfare/tax breaks/subsidies/havens). Correct the Citizens United mistake.
I agree with this partially, taxing the rich won't solve the problem by itself, but it is still an important step. Generating revenue is not the only point, taxing the rich fairly and aggressively at higher and higher incomes sends an important signal and emphasizes that the government/society recognizes the decreasing utility of income. It is part and parcel with the overall unity of the country. It also seems to be important to prevent oligarchs and regulatory capture.
Lol, if you were elected you would rob the absolute shit out of everyone. At least all your best friends could get super rich with their donor advised funds you syphon all that money into.
It's always the very next dollar that the government will spend wisely.
I'm not a hard liner, but we're being taxed all to heck and back. Income tax, sales tax, property tax, inheritance tax, etc, etc, etc. It is just wild to me that people look at our spiraling debt and just have zero to say about solutions that aren't taxing the shit out of other people.
Your meaning isn’t entirely clear to me - probably my fault on that, but Republicans need something better than campaigning on tax cuts when fully half of US income earners pay virtually no income tax. Yes they pay FICA and they believe that to be income taxes they are paying, but it’s definitely not properly labeled as income taxes. It’s a contribution to a personal retirement and old age medical services account.
I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head but the top 2% of earners (if earners be the proper nomenclature) pay some 40 or so percent of the federal taxes into the treasury.
I despair that we pay so little in federal taxes, and that could not persist if we didn’t have the world’s reserve currency which allows us to export inflation we would otherwise have to face.
I believe, personally, that every income earner should pay some level of federal income taxes, lest they soon begin to believe that we can just make the highest earners foot the bill.
OTOH the wealthiest among us do their part, besides the income taxes they pay (which falls into a black hole), with what they keep by putting their accumulated wealth to work in all kinds of investments creating jobs and opportunities which are magnitudes greater in wealth production and in benefits out in the population than having the government taking it can ever be. Everyone, whether an entrepreneur or a mere janitor gains from their keeping their wealth to be invested and reinvested rather than shipping it off to DC
Why would you tax someone who's a productive member of society?
The alternative is that they don't work and then the government pays them welfare.
Go figure!
Best case is to raise the tax free allowance on work each year in like with inflation and tax wealth that isn't invested into schemes that are directly reinvested into the domestic economy.
We're either going to ignore it and attempt to remain a great power or we're going to attempt to pay it down and do nothing anymore. As we do nothing we'll become nothing.
If you've read anything from Noah Smith in the last 5-years you'd realize how wrong he is about basically everything. The debt is simply an expression of boomer savings. This is basically the peak of it and it'll start to liquidate in the coming years at a increasingly rapid pace. That's the real problem. That's what is going to cause stocks and real estate to deflate and cause economic pain. No the debt itself. The debt is just a symptom of the real economy.
The big question is how the government will respond to all this. Will it be dumb and do nothing and when the time comes bailout the corporations again, or will we see systemic changes. The only way Smith is right, is that they'll likely follow the typical neoliberal failed path.
Getting cities and countries into debt just seems like the next logical conclusion to the rich controlling the world. We no longer have governments that respond to citizens, but instead respond to their lenders and servicing the loans. Cutting social services saves the lender and hurts the citizen.
It's crazy to the extent to which this stuff is going that I have genuinely considered the cyberpunk version of the future. Not to mention the fact that we used to have kings in the past which means being relegated to servantry is not out of the realm of possibility. What would it take for the people to rise up and do something? Everyone's drunk with personal debt and cheap entertainment. Bread and circus of the modern age.
We are getting there. The general malaise around young people won't go on forever. We are probably one recession away from torches and pitchforks, at least I hope.
Which is so dumb, that should be a self-sustaining program. If an individual can reliably save for retirement with a 4% withdrawal rate, then large groups with infinite timelines should have an exceedingly easy time with it.
The US owes money to itself. It's fine. Countries that take out foreign debt are the real suckers. The US doesn't even have to issue debt. It does so for historical reasons, but the US could spend without issuing treasuries if it really wanted to. And for the super religious folks who demand you issue debt, they could just do 3-month treasuries.
The US dollar will go the same way the pound did. Over leverage and has no weight in the world. The pound use to be the standard no too long ago. The US economy is being run the exact same way before the Brit’s failed
It's almost a law of physics that all empires, all world powers eventually fail. Throughout history, every single one. And they all followed the same basic path to failure. The US is doing so at at light speed relative to past powers.
I used to think we’d reach the point where conditions were so bad that even private security couldn’t protect the oligarchs from the masses. But I’ve seen the future. They reach a point where human security isn’t really necessary. Instead they have robots - an army of robots to suppress the masses while everyone fights over scraps. And there’s always be an immigrant boogeyman responsible for it all.
They’ll have their families. Or their harems. The friends they pay to maintain their sanity of being otherwise completely despised. No different than the rich currently. Like Kardashians. They all have paid assistants for life that are their “friends” but really just the help. And that’s all you need.
Limitless wealth. The ability to buy anything and everything you need. To arrange for musicians to come to your house and perform private shows for you. Your own hospital, doctors, full house staff. And those people cling to those jobs for dear life because they pay just enough to be more than any other listing in that role.
That, and if they quit, the robots will drag them out by their ankles and toss them into traffic.
"You're totally right, it seems I've wrongly identified your face for an illegal peasant and blow your head to a million pieces, do you want to fill an error report to 'totally safe and secure IA armed robotic guards Inc.'?"
Yea the president and all Republican are going the private equity route!!! Get out all the money you can, while strangling the country with so much debt. Itcan't do anything but go under!
By that time they will all be dead or out of the country... The damn old guals!
The dumb fucks reckon they can strangle the global energy markets to force us to rely on their energy, then steal it from countries in the Western hemisphere and pay off their debt forcing us to buy their oil. We will just dump USD and transition to electric.
Too many people in this thread focusing solely on raising taxes. It will be necessary but the lack of debate on entitlements and inflation is very troubling. Most of you do not understand this half as well as you think you do.
Republicans will use the debt to shut down everything, except for the military/industrial/surveillance/incarceration complex. 'Step out of line, brother, and you'll feel the squeeze.
At some point the money tied to this debt will revalue it has been and we're living it. Should one go all in on the stock market after a correction or are there other assets to convert the cash into?
As far as government policy to address the debt, how do we see the debt issue ever being solved? It likely would require some combination of tax increases and spending cuts over a long period of time, which I suspect would be like a poison pill for any majority in congress and any president supporting it. There may be more creative solutions, but they likely will need to work in tandem with tax increase/spending decrease.
I’ve been seriously considering cashing out my retirement. As a 37 year old I keep talking myself out of it as I’m constantly told it’s bad idea by everyone I’ve mentioned it to.
Could an AI tax improve our outlook (i.e. taxing companies that manage AI software). I imagine that would at least improve employment and income prospects for Americans and encourage companies to ensure AI is used in-tandem with actual humans rather than a replacement piece for cheap labor.
Healthy_Razzmatazz38 | 22 hours ago
the weirdest part of this whole thing is the people who are against raising taxes to stop this are the ones who get fucked if it explodes.
the bezos, musk, zuckerbergs of the world could be taxed 50% and be more powerful than most countries for generations, literally the only fail case for them is dollar assets tanking or US role in the world eroding.
the taxes don't even matter, their companies is where all wealth actually settles, as dollars flow through consumers, to consumer goods which have profits tolled away by their high margin businesses.
Alib668 | 21 hours ago
I agree, the city of Florence tried this whole plan in the 1300s where the elite created consumption taxes as the way to fund everything (tarrifs and sales taxes etc etc). When the crisis happened and they lost the war to Lucca the peasants just rebelled and left leaving them with basically nothing and at the mercy of enemies and the world took until 1420s1430s until they were able to recover.
The adage Adam smith also noted “ for ever rich man there is 1000 poor and only the strong arm of the magistrate keeping them from his door”
“Democracy and taxes is asset protection for the rich…don’t skimp on the payments”. Brown university professor Mark Blythe 2013
Healthy_Razzmatazz38 | 20 hours ago
right before the french revolution the crown was in debt up to its eyes and tried to tax the nobles, they refused, the tax was then put on the peasants and all the nobles got their head cut off.
crazy how short sited people can be
Alib668 | 20 hours ago
No one is a stupid as all of us
The scary bit is that no one is as smart as all of us either
Dorrbrook | 15 hours ago
Praxis
Useless | 17 hours ago
They are betting robot labor, singularity, or immortality will be here before they die, but they are pretty shit at making any of these things happen.
Due-Conflict-7926 | 2 hours ago
Because end of the day, all they know how to do is steal. That’s it. They don’t create shit
IcyMike1782 | 15 hours ago
That Blythe quote hits hard. Thx for sharing.
Awkward-Painter-2024 | 6 hours ago
Which is why all those billionaires are spending hand over foot on on private mercenaries. And the kick is that expense is a tax deduction.
amorphouscloud | 15 hours ago
I have a Trumper friend who says that those billionaires earned their money and it's un-American to take it from them. They say if we tax billionaires more that nobody will want to become a billionaire any more and innovation will stop.
This is all BS of course, but just letting yall know what some of these people are thinking.
One-Employment3759 | 13 hours ago
Particularly because the billionaires are not innovative at all. They were just lucky and knew how to exploit the real innovators that worked for them.
Swaggy669 | 12 hours ago
Then practiced exploiting everybody around them in general.
Distinct-Response907 | 7 hours ago
I would disagree with your friends reason, after all I earn money and the government feels free to help itself to my earnings every two weeks (such concepts as a salary are incomprehensible to the billionaire set, of course). I even think that there should be a wealth tax that kicks in at a few hundred million of wealth, say in the 2-5 percent range. However, what generally actually happens with such a proposal is the billionaires hire hundreds of lawyers to write the wording of the law and then pay off the politicians to implement it and low and behold taxes at my income rate go up while they keep just about everything they had before. This is the danger with tax the rich proposals- they have far more resources than serfs like us and can make the rules whatever they want.
amorphouscloud | 4 hours ago
Hey you're preaching to the choir here. I have tried every argument to convince them taxing the rich is better. Heck, these companies don't even pay taxes, some of them!
Mayor__Defacto | 20 hours ago
We have heard this same story almost verbatim for about fifty years at this point.
Clearly, it simply does not matter, and the people that cry wolf about it have been consistently wrong for decades. At what point do we get to dismiss it as hogwash?
onwo | 21 hours ago
You can't raise taxes enough to stop this. The government needs to get spending under control.
Taxes on extremely successful corporations and individual probably should be raised, but that is not a solution to this problem.
Long-Blood | 18 hours ago
A lot of welfare programs exist entirely because the private sector doesnt pay well enough.
If billionaires were more equitable in the first place, we wouldnt need welfare at all
CNC-Whisperer | 7 hours ago
Which is why I look at this as a whole chicken vs egg argument.
Republicans whine about how the govt. trying to prop up labor markets via the social safety net only causes market issues, as if the market isn't already distorted by a fraction of the top 1% hoovering up a majority of the wealth.
Democrats argue the reason the government needs to get involved is because businesses treat workers like every other factor of production. From where I'm sitting, most employers aren't investing in human capital like 50-80 year ago.
Willing_Activity_855 | 14 hours ago
>A lot of welfare programs exist entirely because the private sector doesnt pay well enough
Then get rid of the programs and surely the private sector will boost .....real incomes ...
DontHaveWares | 12 hours ago
Surely! Please Mr billionaire! Please!
etf_question | 2 hours ago
But then consumer spending increases, supply goes down, prices go up to what the market will bear, you end up where you started. Is that inaccurate?
Necessary_Jacket3213 | 19 hours ago
Not itself the solution but part of the solution. You need to tax billionaires and companies fairly and the mega rich should spend down their assets. Invest their hordes of money into making things better for the public. Make ground breaking technology instead of incremental pieces of crap. We spend money on ai but why not figure out clean energy first? These things could have be done in a sensible way but we do them the dumb way instead?
Willing_Activity_855 | 14 hours ago
> Invest their hordes of money into making things better for the public.
So if they're selling their assets that means someone is buying them.......someone with cash.........
bluebelt | 13 hours ago
Or a thousand someones investing in an opportunity.
Willing_Activity_855 | 2 hours ago
Are you suggesting that everyday Americans are going to buy those shares and those prices, if so why aren't they doing it now?
1776FreeAmerica | 5 hours ago
The only way you get those billions is by doing the opposite of what you're asking them to do. The system rewards and selects for the exploitative practices that create billionaires: low labor costs, high prices for the consumer, etc. A wage ratio cap on businesses, Value Added Tax, and public support of journalism, a return to banning stock buy backs and Eisenhower's income tax rates, are needed to help the system select for the 'sensible' actions you're advocating.
playfuldarkside | 13 hours ago
“Successful” corporations who rely on their labor force being so underpaid they are a drain on taxes because their work force relies on public assistance are not successful by any means and should fail if they cannot appropriately pay their employees. We as a society should stop propping up these companies.
A_Few_Good | 18 hours ago
We can do both at the same time
Ok-Post2247 | 20 hours ago
People literally can't wrap their heads around how big these numbers really are and HOW MUCH money this is. If you liquidated Jeff Bezos's entire net worth it would cover the 500 billion Social Security trust fund shortage in 2032 for six months. Not all of social security JUST the shortfall in the trust and for less than a year.
darknecross | 19 hours ago
You can’t cherry-pick one person and call it fruitless.
Removing Social Security caps and maintaining current benefits would cover 73% of the shortfall.
Doubling the personal income taxes on the top 1% would raise an extra $860b per year.
morbie5 | 4 hours ago
> Removing Social Security caps and maintaining current benefits would cover 73% of the shortfall.
Which not even a majority of elected democrats support
The_Real_BenFranklin | 18 hours ago
Social security is capped because we cap benefits too.
satansmight | 17 hours ago
Change the law and increase the tax for the top earners over time. They don’t rely of SS as a sole source of income once they retire anyway.
thekbob | 18 hours ago
It's called wealth redistributing for a reason. Calling benefits is wise. Capping taxes isn't.
devliegende | 20 hours ago
A 5% wealth tax on the richest 5% will wipe out the deficit
DarkExecutor | 13 hours ago
5th percentile of wealth has $4 million dollars.
devliegende | 7 hours ago
It doesn't have to kick in at $4m and it doesn't have to be a flat 5% for everyone.
According to the Fed the top 1% sits on $55T.
A 3.5% wealth tax on the top 1% will deliver $1.9T. Enough to cover the current deficit.
The point is the claim that the USA cannot afford to raise more tax than it currently does is ridiculous.
The_Real_BenFranklin | 18 hours ago
5% per year would be a super high wealth tax and you’d absolutely see people leave over it.
morbie5 | 4 hours ago
The US has a global taxation system
devliegende | 16 hours ago
That will be okay, because the wealth will stay.
The_Real_BenFranklin | 16 hours ago
… no it won’t? Wealth has fled every other country that’s tried wealth taxes - and this would be way higher than what’s been done before
devliegende | 15 hours ago
Yeah. Elon will put his giga factories, his rocket pads and his vacuum tunnels in a suitcase and take his plane back to South Africa.
Ok-Post2247 | 19 hours ago
The most aggressive policies proposed would raise $500 billion annually. That's a lot of money but not enough to completely solve the problem by itself. Not to mention that while I don't personally think a wealth tax is unconstitutional, we have the Supreme Court that we have for the foreseeable future.
devliegende | 19 hours ago
Rich people's wealth grow by 10+% per year. A 5% wealth tax is merely a 50% tax on annual gains. Problem solved and no one is getting any poorer than they were before. Only poorer than they expected to be.
If the constitution is your problem it is a problem you're choosing to have and then it is obviously not a crisis.
Nadnerb98 | 18 hours ago
That and remove loopholes from the estate tax. It’s bad enough to have oligarchs run this country- when their kids start doing it we will see how corrosive the current system is.
DarkExecutor | 13 hours ago
Why not just tax capital gains more then, taxing wealth is dumb.
devliegende | 7 hours ago
Sure. Tax unrealized capital gains if that makes you feel better. It's pretty much the same thing.
devliegende | 6 hours ago
Not sure if you noticed, but last year Donald Trump intimidated Intel into giving the federal government 10% of the company. That was precisely a 10% once-off wealth tax on all Intel shareholders (many of whom are not particularly wealthy). No constitutional change was needed. As far as I know they didn't change any laws and no billionaire left the country in response.
mmdotmm | 17 hours ago
Because of decades of corporate tax cuts, their revenue as percent of GDP after Trump I was 1%, down from over 7% decades prior. Reinvestment back into companies (as opposed to distributions) among historic lows.
You’re right, you can’t tax out of the problem. But this is a ledger and the revenue side must be adjusted
Willing_Activity_855 | 14 hours ago
Our corporate taxes are in line with the EU average
Obvious_Chapter2082 | 15 hours ago
>Reinvestment back into companies (as opposed to distributions) among historic lows
This sounds like something you made up. How is this getting measured?
It’s also not really a fair comparison to look at corporate tax revenues as a % of GDP. Not only has the number of corporations been shrinking over time, but depreciation has taken up a larger share of GDP too, both of which artificially lower what you’re measuring
onwo | 16 hours ago
The change in spending absolutely dwarfs the change in revenue. Revenue has basically universally gone up - with the only interruptions being recessions and the periods immediately following.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFR
Overall Federal Revenue as a Percent of GDP has been 14-20% for the last 50 + years.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
Tax receipts on corporate income as a percentage of GPD have been 1-2.7% for the last 50 + years.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=3p5
I'm not saying there couldn't be more revenue, but the revenue side should not distract from how large the spending problem is.
bazookateeth | 14 hours ago
We have a spending problem more than a taxation problem at this point.
Reddit_Is_a_jokee | 12 hours ago
There's several solutions we need to try together but they all will suck. Cut spending, raise rates, and taxes, and inflate the debt down.
phtevenbagbifico | 19 hours ago
The government can get its spending under control by creating a society where the means of production are collectively owned instead of privatized.
Start with cutting military spending massively. There's no reason to be bombing foreign countries as much as we do. Then we won't have enemies that hate us, and our border could be better secured... So that's another big cut.
When the means of production are collectively owned instead of privatized for the profit of a few select individuals, we will all be better off. There's no reason for big banks to exist in an ideal society - they should all be credit unions, with strong worker unions to ensure that the workers are compensated well as they serve the credit union's owners. Worker co-ops should be the default model of business in most industries - prices are better at WinCo than Walmart, and their workers make more over time and are set up for retirement via owning the company. Every utility should be a consumer co-op or a municipal utility that can be held accountable by the voting public.
It won't solve everything overnight but will ensure there is better resource distribution and access among the general population, making federal government services and funding less necessary.
The_Real_BenFranklin | 18 hours ago
None of this solves the deficit.
Spivey1196 | 17 hours ago
Read Animal Farm- see how well that works out-
phtevenbagbifico | 17 hours ago
Orwell was a socialist buddy, he was just against authoritarianism by the government. Notice that I'm not calling for a revolution here.
Willing_Activity_855 | 14 hours ago
Open a history book and see how well that turns out every time
Rogue_Einherjar | 15 hours ago
The only spending that needs to be "Under control" is the spending on corporate welfare. The amount of subsidies we give oil companies and such would more than balance the budget.
Werkt | 15 hours ago
Looks like O&G subsidies are about $4-35bn/yr. That’s nowhere near enough to balance anything.
Rogue_Einherjar | 14 hours ago
Quick Google search says "Hundreds to 700 billion each year." But hey, I just know how to read. Also, while I States oil and gas, the "And such" was including corporate subsidies that I don't care to begin to list, with Amazon alone getting $14.5 billion.
Maxpowr9 | 13 hours ago
The working class that is anti-tax are the biggest morons out there. They gladly cut their own safety net and now they will have nothing. Any politician that mentions "saving the heartland" of America is a liar at this point. They have voted against their own self-interest for far too long to the point they would rather let go of the rope than be saved. Been saying this for at least a decade, get out of the Plains if you still can. There is no lifeline coming and your existence should be more important than roots or family.
OddlyFactual1512 | 9 hours ago
They all have massive international investments. Their largest equity holdings are all large international corporations.
AdJazzlike1002 | 5 hours ago
They're too short-sighted, they view themselves as global giants in their own rights, not realising how much their power and authority is dependent on US hegemonic control. Frankly, look at the issues they run into in Europe, Europe would happily regulate the shit out of them or ban them from operating in European markets. However, US hegemonic power manages to stifle these efforts. With that gone, they'll have a very uncomfortable time of it.
omniumoptimus | 28 minutes ago
I am a person who is against raising taxes. I will be absolutely fine, since I saw this coming years ago, and took precautions against it.
The reason why I am against raising taxes is because there is no guarantee debts will be paid. There is no guarantee more money will solve a spending problem. There is no guarantee overspending won’t get worse with more money.
If spending is done responsibly, of course I’d support providing more money. But it is not and doesn’t look like it’ll happen any time soon. So no more money from my end.
The_Real_BenFranklin | 18 hours ago
We obviously need to raise taxes too, but there’s no solution without noticeable cuts to Medicare/medicaid/defense.
Sariscos | 18 hours ago
The capital gains tax is the boogeyman and rightfully so. Most of these guys raise capital by selling equity. You would have to raise taxes on capital gains which makes 401Ks largely useless cause you strip it's tax advantaged status. You'd have to balance this out which many people couldn't agree to.
ocposter123 | 22 hours ago
Taxing all billionaires 100% would pay for the deficit for 3-4 years. Just don’t comment if you are completely ignorant.
devliegende | 20 hours ago
Taxing all billionaires plus a few others around 5% of their wealth every year will wipe out the deficit indefinitely
Jaamun100 | 13 hours ago
It helps wealth inequality to tax billionaires 50%, not really the deficit. I think to tackle the deficit we may need a VAT like Europe, lower cost healthcare, SS reform, and higher taxes on those making above the median income, so like the "middle class wealthy".
Reddit_Is_a_jokee | 12 hours ago
I tried telling someone this and they called me a communist for suggesting tax hikes, cutting gov spending and cutting all programs.
He couldn't grasp the concept that doing nothing is detrimental. We can either do this the hard way or the extremely hard way.
EconomistWithaD | 23 hours ago
Obama’s contribution ($8.85 trillion over 8 years) can at least be justified somewhat by the borrowing costs; during his term, monetary policy kept the FFR near 0.
Trump’s 2020 and Biden’s 2021 additions could also be partially justified; COVID was a massive shock and though we know there was a ton of waste and fraud, doing nothing was simply not possible, especially using policies that restricted economic activity and movement.
Even pre-COVID, Trump’s debt accumulation was at least mirroring Obama’s (averages ~$1 trillion a year), though the FFR was increasing steadily over this time, meaning it was a worse choice.
The latter half of Biden and the first year of Trump have been terrible for this. Complete ignorance of basic economic policy. In 15 months, Trump has added nearly $3 trillion. We’re likely to hit $40 trillion by October, and there is a world out there where Trump leaves office with close to $50 trillion in national debt (he’s pacing >$45 trillion).
We’ve sold out our kids. Shame on us.
1_________________11 | 23 hours ago
How much of Obamas was stopping the horror that was 08 and the shitty stuff banks did to get us there.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
About half was Q1 2009 to Q4 2011.
The recession did end in June 2009, so it’s quite generous giving him until the end of 2011, but he certainly wasn’t the worst.
Accomplished-Cow-234 | 22 hours ago
The recession ended, but the economy was still pretty enemic even while zeroing the policy rate.
mrk1224 | 22 hours ago
*anemic
Accomplished-Cow-234 | 21 hours ago
Thanks, I'll reiterate I'm drinking at a bbq and do not use autocorrect on my phone.
mrk1224 | 21 hours ago
Enjoy the party 🍻
Accomplished-Cow-234 | 21 hours ago
Thanks man
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
GDP growth post COVID is 2.35 (0.75% SD). GDP post GFC is 2.27% (0.59%). GDP growth post-2001 recession until the GFC was 2.9% (but with nearly 1% SD).
Accomplished-Cow-234 | 22 hours ago
I'll take your word for it, but the policy path was wildly different. It was 2.27% even with the amount of stimulus and with rates at zero until like 2016... you also have worsening demographic headwinds as time goes by. We were also well below estimates for potential GDP during that time period. That hasn't been the case with the covid recovery.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
It’s not my word; I just used the FRED numbers.
I’m not disputing that there are a lot of variables in play that explain part of the debt accumulation , and I did say that Obama was different than Biden/Trump.
But he certainly did add to it, and didn’t do anything to ease long run pressures.
He’s easily the best president since the 2000’s, but that’s not been a high bar.
Accomplished-Cow-234 | 22 hours ago
I meant take your word for it since I am drunk at a bbq and on my phone. I am just of the belief that more aggresive policy during the time period was warranted, witg that context in mind even the covid recovery and spending was mostly a policy mistake of too aggressive policy. I agree with your general assessment, but the current period is imho a much more structural deficit problem than the response to any of the past three downturns.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Fuck economics. Enjoy the BBQ. Avoid the hangover.
Bogdanovist_Rebel | 22 hours ago
Yet unemployment didn’t return to pre GFC levels until his last months in office. We really need to find better ways to define crisis because it’s clear that GDP just doesn’t work. Especially when financial services are included.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Why is unemployment a superior metric?
And GDP doesn’t work? It has like a 90% correlation with all other “happiness” or “quality of living” indices. It’s good enough.
Because the “unemployment was high for long periods of Obama) ignores the labor force participation rate settling mechanically lower (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART).
nochinzilch | 22 hours ago
Because GDP includes a lot of financial services that don’t really reflect the health of the economy on "Main Street" if you will suffer that awful metaphor. Unemployment and underemployment are better measures of how the middle class and lower classes are doing.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Unemployment and underemployment are certainly not better indicators for lower classes.
In fact, there is no single indicator for distributional outcomes.
Regardless, GDP isn’t the only measure to measure “crises”. It’s not even the metric used for a recession.
nochinzilch | 20 hours ago
Since when isn’t GDP used for recession?
Why would employment not be a better indicator for lower classes??
EconomistWithaD | 20 hours ago
It’s never been.
Employment is not unemployment.
There aren’t multiple types of unemployment? There aren’t 6 distinct unemployment measures?
That said, I’m willing to look at unemployment as the preferred distributional indicator with a source.
Xeynon | 21 hours ago
> It has like a 90% correlation with all other “happiness” or “quality of living” indices.
Historically this has been true, but that correlation is noticeably starting to break down.
EconomistWithaD | 21 hours ago
Have a source?
Because this doesn’t appear to be broadly true.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-vs-happiness
Xeynon | 21 hours ago
Look at individual countries, the US being one. GDP is higher than it's ever been but life satisfaction has declined.
It might still be broadly true (though the correlation has always been much weaker once you get above middle income status), but there are clearly cases where it doesn't hold up as strongly as it used to at all.
EconomistWithaD | 21 hours ago
Individual movements always happen; I still don’t see any evidence that the correlation is changing.
Xeynon | 21 hours ago
We're talking about the US specifically here. If the correlation is observably breaking down there it's not really relevant whether it still holds up more broadly.
ZeePirate | 22 hours ago
You also can’t or shouldn’t blame a single person. Congress shoulders the blame too
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Well, given that the article is about presidential admins, no, I’m going to be consistent.
ZeePirate | 6 hours ago
Well that’s a fault of the article too
EconomistWithaD | 5 hours ago
👎
ZeePirate | 3 hours ago
It is because presidents themselves don’t set budgets.
It also be important to look at what party controlled each facet of the government because a party controlling all three levels governs much differently then one that controls one or two facets
EconomistWithaD | 3 hours ago
AER
raptorman556 | 21 hours ago
The recession technically ended in 2009, but the economy was still way below capacity for the first half of the 2010s. It was a long, slow recovery, and it took almost a decade to get the unemployment rate back down to pre-recession levels. I actually think there is a strong argument they under-borrowed during this period.
But I agree with your broader point. When conditions improve, borrowing does not go down and that's now pushed the country to crisis levels.
EconomistWithaD | 21 hours ago
I’ve certainly seen that argument; my views on the spending were certainly shaped by the fact that I was in grad school 2009-2014, and there was a lot of debate about the efficacy of the bailouts (with some papers about whether bailed out firms performed better or worse). The broad consensus where I went was that they missed opportunities to spend more when needed, and tacked it on later. Essentially a Miss timing of spending.
I have far bigger complaints about Obama era policies (PPACA) than debt accumulations.
saml01 | 18 hours ago
It looks 8 years to turn around.
WingerRules | 13 hours ago
Also dont forget that Obama put the cost of the wars on the actual deficit. Bush was playing financial games and keeping the cost of the wars off the books.
If you take into account the cost of the wars under Bush, then Obama actually left office with a lower deficit than he started with.
Octavus | 15 hours ago
Plus leftover wars handed to him.
Spirited-Lawyer-8281 | 22 hours ago
For the COVID portion, I wonder how much is just PPP loans and free money given out to companies and individuals who didn't really even need it?
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Waste/fraud was estimated at about 10% of the total $4.2 trillion.
Identified fraud for SNAP is <1%, but improper payments and EBT skimming bring it closer to 12%.
Prepandemic unemployment fraud was 6% in CA; surged to 11-15% nationally for COVID.
Spam_Hand | 22 hours ago
>Waste/fraud was estimated at about 10% of the total $4.2 trillion.
I would lump all dollars that churches took to be fraudulent as well, since they don't pay into the tax system that provided this relief.
It also is pretty much 0 that anyone else will ever be charged with fraud over the PPP forgiveness that republicans mandated in order to pass the bill in the first place while taking out their own loans.
The money that went to congressmen and their shell companies alone was probably 10% - again, I would consider those requests fraudulent when they make (at the time) nearly 5x the salary of the average American worker just based on their public salary (not even getting into the other sources of income...).
Sorry, I'm being a little pedantic, and I know the above is my opinion on certain pieces of the larger issue with PPP and how it was handled long term... but even parroting 10% as a possibility seems extremely low. The bill was re-written in order to encourage taking a risk on fraud and hoping it was forgiven and forgotten about later - which it was.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Do you have any numbers reported by anyone?
Because mine have empirical support, even if they are likely an undercount (much like any other measure of fraud).
Such_Radio_9152 | 20 hours ago
10% Seems like a low estimate tbh
Rizzanthrope | 23 hours ago
We sold out ourselves. I imagine any middle class and lower person retiring in the 2040s-2060s is going to have a bad time.
roamingandy | 17 hours ago
Double how bad you think it is going to be, as Elon Musk has worked out how to dip his fingers in the pension pot with Space X going public.
Rules were changed so it would instantly be listed among the top-companies on the stock exchange, so all the pension funds which follow S&P 500, etc, have automatically bought into his company.. which he's used to buy out Tesla's bad debt right away, buying all those shitty Cyber Trucks and other Tesla's that he can't sell.
He's going to flip debt between the company's, report it as profit on the other side, and no-one is going to stop him as Trump won't let them. All this 'profit' is going to bring even more investment from the pension firms, until one day when there is simply no hiding any more that there is nothing there.
You'd better believe he's going to use that money invested in Space X, and any government contracts he can, to make absolutely huge deals with Tesla, so he hits those performance targets and receives, i think it was 1 Trillion wasn't it, that the board agreed to. That will be real money coming to him, in exchange for the mostly fictitious money he's announcing.
Those retirement pots will be utterly drained empty very soon, whilst still looking like they are full.
LeCollectif | 14 hours ago
What is kind of wild is that this would feel like nonsense a year ago. Now? Plausible.
And for what? Why does the wealthiest man to ever exist want to do this? Either his on-paper wealth is much higher than what it would be in real world assets, or he wants people to suffer. Or both.
Hautamaki | 14 hours ago
You don't have to invest in American index funds. I'm not saying sell everything, but I am saying stop buying American indexes. You can buy Canadian, European, Asian, Australian, developing countries, etc, and get the benefits of a diversified low cost ETF based portfolio without the poison pill Musk is forcing into the American indexes. American indexes are likely overvalued compared to the entire rest of the global economy anyway.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
At least over the past 10 years, average stock return even including COVID is ~16% per year. 20 and 40 year runs are ~11.5%.
So yes, they have high expected future taxes, but have also been in an era of incredible wealth building opportunities.
NoAvocado7971 | 23 hours ago
I’ve been focusing on investment properties over the market to try and hedge for this
Bogdanovist_Rebel | 22 hours ago
Literally the problem.
cmack | 22 hours ago
Not building enough is much more the cause to woes here. Supply is lacking and has been lacking for decades.
Don't pay the rent if you think the rent is too damn high. It's only done because there is a market for it.
MittenstheGlove | 22 hours ago
The market is proximity to work usually.
notyourstranger | 22 hours ago
None of what you say is true.
There is 16 million empty homes in the US and 600K homeless. There is plenty of supply.
The reason rent is high is speculation. Where I live there are hundreds of empty apartments and thousands of homeless people. The salaries do not support paying $3K for a studio apartment. Those who can afford 3K do not want a studio apartment and those who are willing to settle for that, cannot earn enough to pay 3K/month in rent.
The economy is out of balance and forcing both more homeless people and more empty homes.
AmericanEconomicus | 21 hours ago
This is such a misleading statistic: this 16M empty homes doesn’t take into account location. Places with the most jobs (e.g. urban centers) are also the places with the lowest supply of homes because building hasn’t kept pace. The only U.S. city that has successfully lowered or kept rent stable with inflation is Minneapolis, and the reason for that is because they’ve been building like crazy.
There are some cartel-esque characteristics in the rental market courtesy of AI platforms, but cities have been attempting to curtail that. Other things cities can do to lower prices is implement/raise vacancy taxes to incentivize landlords to find a renter for their unit, thus forcing them to lower prices to find a renter as soon as possible rather than leave the unit vacant until they find someone to pay their price.
ocposter123 | 22 hours ago
Birth rates are collapsing. Market will do better in most locations imo.
OnlineParacosm | 22 hours ago
That’s awesome, I’ve been learning how to farm regeneratively the past decade while I’ve been locked out of real estate, unable to help fix our food supply chain because of this kind of behavior.
Glad you are “hedging” though that’s really cool. What good are you doing with your money, though?
Spectrum1523 | 7 hours ago
Does our food supply chain need fixing?
OnlineParacosm | 5 hours ago
What would you care?
Spectrum1523 | 5 hours ago
I mean if it's broken I do care, I use food every day
Not_Legal_Advice_Pod | 22 hours ago
I think the bigger issue was the ever more negligent failure to raise taxes, fix healthcare, and pull in military spending as entitlement spending skyrocketed (and will continue to do so). The cuts and taxes that would have been painful 15 years ago will be apocalyptic in more 10 years.
And as much as I want government discretionary spending to be cut, DOGE was the "the gang cuts the federal deficit" approach.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Our government and politicians have been fantastic at all kicking the can down the road.
WingerRules | 13 hours ago
Deficit can be balanced by returning the military budget back to 2016 levels, minor cuts in other programs, tax enforcement and loophole closure, and minor tax increases.
Military budget was 580 billion in 2016, so thats 400 billion saved.
A trillion is lost every year to tax evasion and loop holes.
So just those two things saves 1.4 trillion of the 1.9 trillion dollar deficit.
Increasing taxes by 10% generates 525 billion. Note I said 10%, not 10 points. Someone in the 22% tax bracket would only see it raised to 24%.
So now you're at 1.9 Trillion.
Any further savings from minor cuts in programs or tax increases now starts paying down the debt.
Republicans will not go this route though, they will use the debt crisis to destroy the social programs and safety nets and government protections & regulators they ideologically oppose.
Southport84 | 21 hours ago
Full stop. All presidents after Clinton have done a horrible job on the national debt.
Spivey1196 | 17 hours ago
But NAFTA hollowed out our manufacturing base! Who woulda thunk China would have set up thousands of companies/ factories in Mexico to build everything with no taxes / import fees to USA? Dumbest move EVER!!
RealisticForYou | 21 hours ago
Clinton...considered himself a fiscal conservative and social liberal.
Master_Art_1286 | 20 hours ago
Was he only able to balance the budget because of Bush increasing taxes?
RealisticForYou | 20 hours ago
Just learned this morning that the U.S. has over 50,000 troops, alone, in the Mid-east. I was shocked at that number! Why so many troops when we now have drone technology and high tech missiles...I mean really? America has a spending problem.
Master_Art_1286 | 20 hours ago
You’re speaking my exact language here
RealisticForYou | 20 hours ago
Don’t think so. Living in California at the time when CA’s real estate market took a major hit as Clinton made big cuts to that military budget. This was when I purchased my first home due to military cuts….got a good deal.
I also remember there were cuts to Welfare. Women could no longer just spit out a bunch of kids to collect welfare checks for each kid….etc.
Clinton made many “cuts” to balance our budget.
doubagilga | 20 hours ago
It’s not a partisan thing as you note well. It really is that Americans just don’t want to stop increasing spending.
mmoonbelly | 22 hours ago
Who did you sell the debt to?
If it’s within your own economy, it’s mitigated via taxes and inflation. (No capital outflows)
If it’s outside, dollar devaluation sorts out your issue and dollar revaluation has no impact as you’re paying 1 unit of your currency back.
shwarma_heaven | 22 hours ago
The difference in Democrat administration and Republicans is that Democrats tend to reduce the debt as a factor of GDP.
Republicans on the other hand fund economic growth with so much debt, the growth pails in comparison.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Are you sure? Let’s do the analysis, using correlations (we can try a causal analysis, but if a correlation doesn’t exist, hard to argue for causal).
From 1966 to 2025, the correlation between debt as a percent of GDP and being a Democrat president is +0.29; or Dem presidents have higher debt to GDP. Correlation gets slightly less strong (0.28) when you eliminate post-2019.
It’s not a correlation worth talking about, but certainly the data don’t support the unconditional hypothesis.
Edit: https://www.aeaweb.org/research/why-does-the-economy-do-better-democrats-white-house
“…The GDP growth gap cannot be simply explained by higher government spending during Democratic presidencies…”
shwarma_heaven | 18 hours ago
I'm positive of it. Since I can't post images here, you will have to look at the table. This table shows debt as a function of GDP. The table starts in the 70s and stretches into 2025.
Debt is not bad as long as it is rising slower than the economy is growing. The table shows the percent of debt to the GDP. Higher the percent, the more that debt is in total dollars compared to GDP. And if the factor is greater then 100, it means the debt is now larger than GDP. the slope of the line shows whether the debt is escalating faster or slower compared to the GDP.
Look at the administrations we do see. The national debt was decreasing as a function of GDP for the 30+ years following WWII, including Carter. In 1981 Reagan took over, and you see a significant reversal of that trend on the way to tripling the national debt. He grew the economy, but he he the debt WAY faster.
In 1993, Clinton takes over, and again, you see a huge reduction of debt as a factor of GDP. And then Bush takes over, and it reverses again, and explodes at the end of his term as he ends up doubling the national debt. Obama takes over in 2009, and it definitely continues to rise fast but you can see the slope begin to decrease one year into his term. Trump takes over in 2017. And in 2020, blows it up quicker and higher than any admin in American History since WWII (and yes we had COVID, but one could easily argue it was his poor handling that lead to the massive spike, especially when you compare to the very next year when Biden takes over. Biden reversed the trend once again. The economy is growing faster than the debt, until Trump takes over in 2025. If the chart stretched into 2026, you would continue to see that line once again escalate.
So yes, Democrats do a better job growing the economy in comparison to national debt. They are better stewards of the economy, which is mainly driven by the middle class and small businesses. No wonder people trust them more.
EconomistWithaD | 18 hours ago
Where do you think I got the data for the correlation?
Don’t do words. Do a correlation with a binary variable. It’s very simple. You’re wrong.
EconomistWithaD | 21 hours ago
Now, perhaps what you really meant was several broad economic outcomes tend to be better under Dem presidents?
The answer is probably, though there are still caveats.
https://www.aeaweb.org/research/why-does-the-economy-do-better-democrats-white-house
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20140913
A relevant snippet:
“Rather, it appears that the Democratic edge stems mainly from more benign oil shocks, superior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term future.”
So, not sure I’d call all those policy wins, but it does exist.
shwarma_heaven | 20 hours ago
Money is faith. At the end of the faith, people have not faith that Democrats will be good stewards of the economy. All you have to do is look at the last 3 GOP 2 term administrations. Reagan cut taxes and tripped the national debt, and ended with a recession. Bush cut taxes for the wealthy Party 2, doubled the national debt, and ended in recession. Trump is well on his way to make those two look like amateurs.
Meanwhile, the past 3 Democrat admin reduced debt as a function of GDP. Hmmm, I wonder why people have more faith in Democrats.... 🤔
EconomistWithaD | 19 hours ago
And yet I’ve proven, using data, your belief is incorrect.
How delightful people won’t change opinions when facts refute them.
shwarma_heaven | 18 hours ago
Yeah, you might want to look again. I explained it better in this post and backed it up with the Feds own data: https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/s/vUeGRuC9PD
EconomistWithaD | 17 hours ago
Download the data. Do a binary variable. =1 for a Democrat.
Correlate.
The answer?
0.29.
shwarma_heaven | 16 hours ago
Your correlation argument is flawed because you’re correlating party affiliation against the absolute level of debt/GDP, which is a cumulative time-series variable shaped by inherited debt, prior administrations, wars, recessions, and external shocks. That tells you who happened to be in office when the debt level was high—not who caused it. It would be like blaming the number of stairs in a stairwell with whomever is standing on the highest stair.
A more meaningful way to evaluate stewardship is to measure the rate of change in debt-to-GDP, not the raw debt level. The equation is simple: (Debt/GDP at end of presidency − Debt/GDP at start) ÷ years in office. That gives the average annual change in debt/GDP. A positive number means debt grew faster than GDP (worsening fiscal trajectory); a negative number means GDP grew faster than debt (improving trajectory). That’s a much cleaner metric than your correlation because it measures what actually changed during an administration, instead of assigning blame based on inherited totals.
So if Republicans averaged, say, +3.2 debt/GDP points per year while Democrats averaged +0.8, that would mean Republican administrations historically increased the debt burden relative to GDP about 4x faster (which is accurate when you actually do the math). That’s a materially stronger analysis than saying “Democrat = 1” and correlating against a cumulative number that presidents inherit from previous administrations.
And zooming out, there’s a broader pattern your simple correlation ignores: major economic damage has repeatedly occurred near the end of Republican administrations—1990 (Bush Sr), 2001 and 2008 (Bush Jr), and 2020 (Trump). One instance could be coincidence; repeated instances suggest a pattern worth examining. That doesn’t automatically prove Republicans are worse economic stewards, but it absolutely means a single 0.29 correlation coefficient is nowhere near enough to make the sweeping claim you’re making.
EconomistWithaD | 16 hours ago
So, that’s a very long winded way of saying the data don’t back up your claim.
But thanks for the ChatGPT TL;DR explanation. It’s pretty poor.
By the way; your original point was this:
“The difference in Democrat administration and Republicans is that Democrats tend to reduce the debt as a factor of GDP.”
Yep, that’s absolute debt to GDP. I used the stats you hypothesized.
shwarma_heaven | 15 hours ago
Yep, that's why I used AI. My explanation wasn't getting across what I wanted to say. It's the rate of change which is more indicative of good stewardship of the economy, not who ends up at the top of the staircase...
DimMak1 | 22 hours ago
I disagree about “doing nothing was simply not possible”. This is the sort of thinking that took us from 5 global banks being too big to fail, to now literally every F500 company being too big to fail. Biden literally bailed out billionaire and trillionaire VCs who banked at SVB even though the billionaires chose not to manage banking risk and actually caused the bank run. Doing nothing and allowing failure would have been the right move there as well.
At some point the free market needs to let the invisible hand crush those who take on massive risks and make irrational decisions. Right now, the more you take on risk, the better your returns are in every circumstance and the downside is blocked by the Fed put. That’s the sign of a manipulated and centrally planned market. Until the invisible hand is freed, the entirety of American “prosperity” is solely due to infinity govt debt and infinity consumer debt.
Someday the infinity won’t be infinity and then things will get ugly
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
You can keep posting about how I have a 70 IQ (and then deleting it; very brave).
But perhaps you can go see how economics treats the keyword “invisible hand” on NBER and see how the profession you are in the sub on uses it.
Hint: not for this.
DimMak1 | 22 hours ago
I deleted nothing
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Whenever someone yells “invisible hand”, much like MMT, the point can and should be ignored.
KBAR1942 | 22 hours ago
I have to agree. There is no such thing as the "invisible hand." Not anymore.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
No, the concept exists. It’s just not that useful of a concept, and people that yell it invariably misunderstand its use in the discipline.
KBAR1942 | 22 hours ago
Fair enough. I understand where you are coming from.
WaffleTacoFrappucino | 20 hours ago
no justification for printing 40% of all dollars ever printed in a 5 year period, zero, zilch, do not pass go
Important-Emu-6691 | 16 hours ago
Eh, that’s a bad way to look at things. You can borrow at low interest rate only temporarily since US always run a deficit, so the amount of debt will always be a thing thats going to affect and be affected by future interest rate.
The Covid loans in hindsight was fairly bad, because a huge portion of it just ended up being siphoned into people and institutions that made money through meme stocks and crypto. Now there’s a wealth glut at the top while most people are running out of money.
While the money stay at the top and haven’t flown back into investments, part of inflation from the COVID money is basically being pushed back. The problem here is depending on how the money get dispersed from the wealthy, it will cause different effects, and there’s no guarantee a major portion of it will trickle down to rest of the population.
We are basically in a pretty bad time of how the wealth is being dispersed atm - AI.
This investment not only does not create jobs, it actively destroy some high paying jobs, AND it competes for resources like water, electricity, and chips, which literally everyone else uses.
On top of that, remember these are money government borrowed, and the government is already considering cutting entitlements to sustain the loan and their interest while giving the wealthy a tax cut.
kylogram | 22 hours ago
I didn't sell out anyone's kids. Republicans put the nail in this coffin alone.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
Republicans only?
You certainly haven’t looked at any debt measures.
You certainly didn’t read the article.
Why participate when you can be so easily fact checked?
kylogram | 21 hours ago
No, I pay attention to congress. I should be more accurate and call them Conservatives.
Democrats have not had a meaningful political majority in government since Obama. Republicans have played in open opposition to any measure that would put rails on this kind of overspending. Even when Democrats did have enough of a majority to affect any change in recent memory, they literally had to force through anything (which they also repeatedly failed to do, despite platforming on reigning in debt).
Now we are in this mess, that has been snowballing since the dotcom boom. It's a Nixon-Reagan wet-dream, and the ultimate outcome of Citizens United.
EconomistWithaD | 21 hours ago
So you didn’t read the article, then. Glorious.
TheFuns | 19 hours ago
What about the second half of Biden in 2024 was bad? If anything most of it was necessary to escape a pandemic. I’m a little confused by this.
EconomistWithaD | 19 hours ago
It’s explained quite well in the article you didn’t read.
TheFuns | 19 hours ago
I read it. It does not explain it- just calls it deficit spending without mention of cause or any underlying issues it was addressing
EconomistWithaD | 19 hours ago
His inability to rein in spending knowing rates were getting high. In an era of inflation in large part caused by deficit spending.
TheFuns | 18 hours ago
So at any given time a president should halt spending at this point no matter the underlying issues?
EconomistWithaD | 18 hours ago
No. But we were out of COVID by 2023 and 2024, and had just escaped the worst inflation in four plus decades.
There was nothing smart about deficit spending then. Poor economics.
TheFuns | 18 hours ago
You’re right that it was poor economics but it’s hard to blame Biden given the tax cuts in 2017 and 2025
EconomistWithaD | 18 hours ago
He could raise revenues? Cut spending? Huh.
TheFuns | 17 hours ago
Cut spending I can kind of understand the argument, raise revenue you’re only getting through growth and taxes which is unlikely especially when the entire world was still trying to rebound since the pandemic officially ended in may of 23. Biden did try to pursue IRS enforcement as an attempt to raise revenue but losing the house killed that. Also, There were still large concerns about mutations and further complications. Just because the pandemic was over doesn’t mean it didn’t leave issues. Supply chains took years to normalize, requiring ongoing intervention. Healthcare system backlogs and staffing shortages persisted well into 2024. Mental health crises surged and required sustained funding. Small business recovery was uneven and needed continued support. Infrastructure that was deferred during the pandemic still needed addressing
mistressbitcoin | 16 hours ago
Its been the same for decades... yet it hasn't really affected anyone's life.
EconomistWithaD | 16 hours ago
Um. You’re wrong.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
mistressbitcoin | 16 hours ago
How has your life been negatively impacted?
If that number rises to 150% over the next 20 years, the same argument will be made, and we will wish for a return to today's debt levels. And yet living standards will probably be higher, as they are higher now than 20 years ago.
EconomistWithaD | 16 hours ago
Growing debt has no macroeconomic impact?
Read this. Change your priors.
https://www.pgpf.org/article/new-report-rising-national-debt-will-cause-significant-damage-to-the-u-s-economy/
mistressbitcoin | 15 hours ago
"Will cause?"
Shouldn't it have already caused significant damage...?
EconomistWithaD | 15 hours ago
They are showing how growing, and unsustainable debt, negatively impacts GDP, employment, wages, and investment.
Fine. Read the following:
https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/inflationary-risks-rising-federal-deficits-and-debt
AnUnmetPlayer | 13 hours ago
"Referred to as “crowding out,” increased borrowing by the federal government means less capital is available as investors buy federal debt rather than investing into private enterprises."
This is junk. Financial crowding out isn't real because loanable funds isn't real. Investment creates savings, savings do not constrain investment. Public sector spending increases the money supply, and it's those savings that get used to buy up treasuries. Yields are a function of policy.
So long the mainstream continues to ignore the stock flow consistency of sectoral balances and uses pretzel logic to believe that this is actually a positive correlation despite what your eyes are obviously telling you, then you'll all continue to be worried about about a doomsday event that will never come. Your kids haven't been sold out.
There will be no debt crisis. Interest rates are a policy choice, which means yields are a policy choice. The government determines it's own borrowing costs. It can even pick zero if it wants to.
EconomistWithaD | 13 hours ago
👎
AnUnmetPlayer | 13 hours ago
Well argued lol.
Government debt is non-government savings. So part of the problem is in your bank account. If you truly believe the debt is an existential problem, then you should donate some of your savings and tell everyone you know to donate as well.
EconomistWithaD | 12 hours ago
Yes, waste my time arguing on something we are diametrically opposed about, and your evidence is a correlation.
Nah, I’m good. As I said.
👎
Busterlimes | 22 hours ago
Trump isnt going to "leave office" because authoritarians dont leave. Trump will either die in office or be forcefully removed, there was no peaceful transition of power his first time around and its absolutely INSANE to think he would allow for a peaceful transition of power his 2nd time around after surrounding himself with loyalists. The world where Trump leaves office is the same place you can find flying pigs and unicorns.
EconomistWithaD | 22 hours ago
If you’re going to just post hypothetical manifestos, just miss my posts.
Busterlimes | 19 hours ago
Imagine believing this is hypothetical when he didnt leave office peacefully the first time. One of us have history backing our claim and it ain't you. . . . Your delusion of American Exceptionalism is what got us here.
blackcain | 22 hours ago
But finally we'll get a christian utopia!
Alib668 | 21 hours ago
What’s ffr?
EconomistWithaD | 21 hours ago
Federal funds effective rate.
Alib668 | 21 hours ago
But that while a measure of risk it has many other things in it as well. I’d say a more intelligent metric for the USA is capacity to pay back, what I mean is debt burden to tax take, plus a side of potential tax take( like congress could pass X law(they choose not too) but the could not create Swedish style tax in this environment(what is not possible due to cost) .
EconomistWithaD | 21 hours ago
What?
Alib668 | 21 hours ago
So just because the interest rate is rising doesn’t mean the USA is at risk of default. Yes it is a factor in the bond auction but you have many other factors mixed into that auction such as the buyer’s current portfolio, hell the fact the Md is going through hell so can’t actually sign off on cuz
The risk of default only happens when people loose faith in ability to be paid back. That is when the threshold of current year to year spending cannot service the debt, rather than debt to gdp
EconomistWithaD | 21 hours ago
That’s not what i said, but unsurprising coming from someone who wouldn’t click a link.
Alib668 | 20 hours ago
? Your analysis is the final sentence we sold out our kids. My view is no we haven’t it’s genuinely fine, congress just raises tax takes the recession on the chin and we in 10 years are in a better place.
The issue is the unwillingness to accept the party ended in 2008 and we are just socialising the Rich’s losses
EconomistWithaD | 20 hours ago
Someone didn’t read the article this thread is based on.
Alib668 | 20 hours ago
Having read it I still don’t see the issue? It’s basically the same othadoxy that we are screwed and our kids are screwed because we need austerity. My view is we don’t it’s actually ok cos your borrowing against the world not against the us economy. And provided people belive congress could raises taxes then the debt can be any number it’s irrelevant what that number is because people will keep funding the USA.
Separate_Bid_2364 | 14 hours ago
Using Covid as an excuse to print roughly 40% of all the dollars ever printed is a choice I suppose. Let’s get this straight very little of any of this borrowing should be classified as justified. Everyone wants to cite Keynesian theory until it actually comes to paying back what you owe.
EconomistWithaD | 14 hours ago
Partially justified. There existed rationale for fiscal stimulus. There was plenty wrong with the practical
Implementation.
Ragemonster93 | 19 hours ago
I think the biggest problem here is political- in a democracy its really hard to do long term (10-15 year) plans because of the election cycles without bipartisan support. And anything that actually fixes the problem long term (increased taxes on high earners/corporations, spending cuts etc) are never going to have bipartisan support at this point. So I dont see a way out, because its also not possible to fix the partisan divide without long term planning and popular supportanyway, which is also not going to happen.
Richandler | 14 hours ago
The problems isn't the debt itself, the problem is what you're saying is the hard part about solving the debt.
ShanksOStabs | 19 hours ago
Its gotten so out of hand that if US cut its military spending by 95 percent it would take about 45 years give or take to reign in the national debt....
Minimum_Sugar_6327 | 7 hours ago
rein
AnalyticalAlpaca | 22 hours ago
It feels like Republicans are killing the golden goose and there's little we can do but watch in horror. I'm honestly not optimistic about a way out. Republicans will never support tax increases, and I'm skeptical Democrats would be willing add taxes in a way that would actually generate appreciative revenue. And unfortunately it'll be worse and worse the longer it's ignored.
The best way out might be for Democrats to support sneakier taxes that impact us less obviously? I don't know.
If I were elected president (I would never be elected) I'd:
I know the last one would be very controversial, but it's the primary way the super wealthy are able to pay so much less in taxes (as a %). While the current capital gains tax discount does encourage stock investment, I don't see why stock investment should be encouraged any more than actual labor (ie income via income tax).
Maybe those would be enough to get us closer to at least a healthier deficit.
Shitty_Paint_Sketch | 21 hours ago
I am a high earner but you would still have my vote. I don't have a billion dollars but even I don't want to see our golden goose cooked.
SimplyArgon | 20 hours ago
I understand your idea of 15% cut on military. However, it should be approached through contracts with the gov. Why are we funding SpaceX with our tax dollars? Or why continue the cap on social security when billionaires stop contributing within days of the new year?
Edit: To the replies, you can base it off "hostility" towards SpaceX or Elon but look at Nasa budget over the years and contracts handed out. The money we are paying in taxes go towards the contracts, between cutting funding and various methods the money is then handed out to companies (SpaceX). Sure, SpaceX can do it cheaper but think of it as quality versus quantity. SpaceX is doing multiple runs but hasn't exceeded past ISS, which is in low orbit. All I am saying, we see it time and time again that XYX company provides said part at a price thats ridiculous because they state the Gov needs it, they influence congress with money in some form for the agency to buy product. Those said items then are not needed because its cheap, over inflated part that the government then has to look for a new supplier. Repeat.
The_Real_BenFranklin | 18 hours ago
Spacex sends things into space a lot cheaper than anyone else
DefenestrationPraha | 8 hours ago
I don't really grok your "Edit" argument. Both the US government and most of the private sector worldwide book launches of their satellites by SpaceX because they are both cheap and have a lot of payload capacity available.
"but hasn't exceeded past ISS, which is in low orbit."
Yes, but how much demand is for higher orbits? Not much. The vast majority of satellites are on LEO. The market corresponds to the demand here.
Own-Lavishness4029 | 17 hours ago
You can dislike Elon, but the government wants to put things into space and Space X is massively cheaper.
WaffleTacoFrappucino | 20 hours ago
because spacex is cheap compared to the bloated crap nasa has been
GeeOh58 | 15 hours ago
Part of NASA is research. Everything SpaceX does is private. The value of NASA is the public domain research and technology. Tax where the money is (wealth) and cut where the bloat is (defense and corporate welfare/tax breaks/subsidies/havens). Correct the Citizens United mistake.
WaffleTacoFrappucino | 5 hours ago
spacex is only allowed to serve US interests, it’s the same thing, it patents nothing
VeryLucky_Shoe_9603 | 16 hours ago
Space X is doing things “the Government” wants done at less cost than it can do them itself or anyone else can, and better and faster.
I have to ask, where does this hostility towards Musk come from if not base political hostility?
The_Real_BenFranklin | 18 hours ago
You can’t solve this by only taxing the super rich. Look at any Scandinavian country and its higher taxes for everyone across the board.
QuickAltTab | 6 hours ago
I agree with this partially, taxing the rich won't solve the problem by itself, but it is still an important step. Generating revenue is not the only point, taxing the rich fairly and aggressively at higher and higher incomes sends an important signal and emphasizes that the government/society recognizes the decreasing utility of income. It is part and parcel with the overall unity of the country. It also seems to be important to prevent oligarchs and regulatory capture.
Ateist | 6 hours ago
Alternative solution: print money till you have inflation in the 20-25% range. Does the same while reducing the debt.
Own-Lavishness4029 | 17 hours ago
Lol, if you were elected you would rob the absolute shit out of everyone. At least all your best friends could get super rich with their donor advised funds you syphon all that money into.
It's always the very next dollar that the government will spend wisely.
AnalyticalAlpaca | 17 hours ago
Are you ok?
VeryLucky_Shoe_9603 | 16 hours ago
Absolutely right; always the next dollar . . .
Own-Lavishness4029 | 15 hours ago
I'm not a hard liner, but we're being taxed all to heck and back. Income tax, sales tax, property tax, inheritance tax, etc, etc, etc. It is just wild to me that people look at our spiraling debt and just have zero to say about solutions that aren't taxing the shit out of other people.
VeryLucky_Shoe_9603 | 12 hours ago
Your meaning isn’t entirely clear to me - probably my fault on that, but Republicans need something better than campaigning on tax cuts when fully half of US income earners pay virtually no income tax. Yes they pay FICA and they believe that to be income taxes they are paying, but it’s definitely not properly labeled as income taxes. It’s a contribution to a personal retirement and old age medical services account.
I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head but the top 2% of earners (if earners be the proper nomenclature) pay some 40 or so percent of the federal taxes into the treasury.
I despair that we pay so little in federal taxes, and that could not persist if we didn’t have the world’s reserve currency which allows us to export inflation we would otherwise have to face.
I believe, personally, that every income earner should pay some level of federal income taxes, lest they soon begin to believe that we can just make the highest earners foot the bill.
OTOH the wealthiest among us do their part, besides the income taxes they pay (which falls into a black hole), with what they keep by putting their accumulated wealth to work in all kinds of investments creating jobs and opportunities which are magnitudes greater in wealth production and in benefits out in the population than having the government taking it can ever be. Everyone, whether an entrepreneur or a mere janitor gains from their keeping their wealth to be invested and reinvested rather than shipping it off to DC
Huge-Description3228 | 18 hours ago
Labour shouldn't be taxed at all.
Why would you tax someone who's a productive member of society?
The alternative is that they don't work and then the government pays them welfare.
Go figure!
Best case is to raise the tax free allowance on work each year in like with inflation and tax wealth that isn't invested into schemes that are directly reinvested into the domestic economy.
WaffleTacoFrappucino | 20 hours ago
All we have to do to pay off our debt is kill the fake fraudulent entitlement programs, a trillion dollars a year comes back at that point
AnalyticalAlpaca | 20 hours ago
What are you referring to here? Honestly asking
Jessica1234567891011 | 22 hours ago
We're either going to ignore it and attempt to remain a great power or we're going to attempt to pay it down and do nothing anymore. As we do nothing we'll become nothing.
WaffleTacoFrappucino | 20 hours ago
until the rest of the world stops investing in US interests we won’t change
devliegende | 19 hours ago
until the rest of the world stops investing in US interests there's no need to change
Richandler | 14 hours ago
If you've read anything from Noah Smith in the last 5-years you'd realize how wrong he is about basically everything. The debt is simply an expression of boomer savings. This is basically the peak of it and it'll start to liquidate in the coming years at a increasingly rapid pace. That's the real problem. That's what is going to cause stocks and real estate to deflate and cause economic pain. No the debt itself. The debt is just a symptom of the real economy.
The big question is how the government will respond to all this. Will it be dumb and do nothing and when the time comes bailout the corporations again, or will we see systemic changes. The only way Smith is right, is that they'll likely follow the typical neoliberal failed path.
TechnoCat | 22 hours ago
Getting cities and countries into debt just seems like the next logical conclusion to the rich controlling the world. We no longer have governments that respond to citizens, but instead respond to their lenders and servicing the loans. Cutting social services saves the lender and hurts the citizen.
hasuchobe | 22 hours ago
It's crazy to the extent to which this stuff is going that I have genuinely considered the cyberpunk version of the future. Not to mention the fact that we used to have kings in the past which means being relegated to servantry is not out of the realm of possibility. What would it take for the people to rise up and do something? Everyone's drunk with personal debt and cheap entertainment. Bread and circus of the modern age.
Test-NetConnection | 21 hours ago
We are getting there. The general malaise around young people won't go on forever. We are probably one recession away from torches and pitchforks, at least I hope.
musicismydeadbeatdad | 20 hours ago
A lot of cities and states are already in huge debt thanks to pension obligations
TechnoCat | 20 hours ago
Yes, that is another type of debt than the one I am talking about. But the demographic size change is not going to go well.
QuickAltTab | 6 hours ago
Which is so dumb, that should be a self-sustaining program. If an individual can reliably save for retirement with a 4% withdrawal rate, then large groups with infinite timelines should have an exceedingly easy time with it.
IsHotDogSandwich | 22 hours ago
100,000%.
Richandler | 14 hours ago
The US owes money to itself. It's fine. Countries that take out foreign debt are the real suckers. The US doesn't even have to issue debt. It does so for historical reasons, but the US could spend without issuing treasuries if it really wanted to. And for the super religious folks who demand you issue debt, they could just do 3-month treasuries.
Terrible_Beyond_3897 | 22 hours ago
Bingo
WaffleTacoFrappucino | 20 hours ago
cutting social services gets rid of a trillion dollars a year in funding fixes the problem
TechnoCat | 20 hours ago
Technically having no government would "fix the problem".
WaffleTacoFrappucino | 5 hours ago
unfortunately it doesn’t work as intended
Swaki85 | 8 hours ago
The US dollar will go the same way the pound did. Over leverage and has no weight in the world. The pound use to be the standard no too long ago. The US economy is being run the exact same way before the Brit’s failed
ExquisiteOrifice | an hour ago
It's almost a law of physics that all empires, all world powers eventually fail. Throughout history, every single one. And they all followed the same basic path to failure. The US is doing so at at light speed relative to past powers.
MyCassadaga | 22 hours ago
I used to think we’d reach the point where conditions were so bad that even private security couldn’t protect the oligarchs from the masses. But I’ve seen the future. They reach a point where human security isn’t really necessary. Instead they have robots - an army of robots to suppress the masses while everyone fights over scraps. And there’s always be an immigrant boogeyman responsible for it all.
Alertcircuit | 21 hours ago
This reminds me, I heard that these Datacenters are gonna be protected by robot dogs soon.
Richandler | 14 hours ago
I don't think people understand how valuable blankets will be. No I didn't respond to the wrong comment.
ohyeathatsright | 21 hours ago
It doesn't sound like a great world for oligarchs either. Are they just going to walk around their robotically tended gardens of Eden alone?
MyCassadaga | 21 hours ago
They’ll have their families. Or their harems. The friends they pay to maintain their sanity of being otherwise completely despised. No different than the rich currently. Like Kardashians. They all have paid assistants for life that are their “friends” but really just the help. And that’s all you need.
Limitless wealth. The ability to buy anything and everything you need. To arrange for musicians to come to your house and perform private shows for you. Your own hospital, doctors, full house staff. And those people cling to those jobs for dear life because they pay just enough to be more than any other listing in that role.
That, and if they quit, the robots will drag them out by their ankles and toss them into traffic.
ohyeathatsright | 21 hours ago
That's a lot of trust for a lot of staff on the back of taking from the staff's families.
Freud-Network | 15 hours ago
Their families will live inside the compound like hostages.
mistressbitcoin | 16 hours ago
If you dont want Kardashian billionaires, you dont watch them. If you dont want tech billionaires, you dont buy their products.
But clearly enough people do want those things.
ooqq | 20 hours ago
"You're totally right, it seems I've wrongly identified your face for an illegal peasant and blow your head to a million pieces, do you want to fill an error report to 'totally safe and secure IA armed robotic guards Inc.'?"
zarnovich | 20 hours ago
The rich don't ever have to interact with normies and the normies are working to hard not to be homeless.
Skibidibum69 | 16 hours ago
lol what?! Your idea of society is a movie
MyCassadaga | 7 hours ago
Yes, our fall will be quite cinematic.
CradleCity | 2 hours ago
And yet, many of these billionaires and techbros watched those dystopian movies and didn't thought "this is disturbing and worrisome."
They think "that's awesome, I want that, and I have the resources to make them come true, along with my buddies".
fungoodtrade | 22 hours ago
sure i live here, but you can leave me out of this conversation. people should take advantage of the chapter 7 bankruptcy rules and git er dun.
allied1987 | 19 hours ago
Yea the president and all Republican are going the private equity route!!! Get out all the money you can, while strangling the country with so much debt. Itcan't do anything but go under!
By that time they will all be dead or out of the country... The damn old guals!
No_Expression_3299 | 12 hours ago
The dumb fucks reckon they can strangle the global energy markets to force us to rely on their energy, then steal it from countries in the Western hemisphere and pay off their debt forcing us to buy their oil. We will just dump USD and transition to electric.
Separate_Bid_2364 | 14 hours ago
Too many people in this thread focusing solely on raising taxes. It will be necessary but the lack of debate on entitlements and inflation is very troubling. Most of you do not understand this half as well as you think you do.
MMessinger | 10 hours ago
Republicans will use the debt to shut down everything, except for the military/industrial/surveillance/incarceration complex. 'Step out of line, brother, and you'll feel the squeeze.
SupportNewThingZombi | 14 hours ago
At some point the money tied to this debt will revalue it has been and we're living it. Should one go all in on the stock market after a correction or are there other assets to convert the cash into?
Fantastic_Stock_6819 | 6 hours ago
As far as government policy to address the debt, how do we see the debt issue ever being solved? It likely would require some combination of tax increases and spending cuts over a long period of time, which I suspect would be like a poison pill for any majority in congress and any president supporting it. There may be more creative solutions, but they likely will need to work in tandem with tax increase/spending decrease.
TheChewyWaffles | 18 hours ago
So how do you hedge against something like this?
Blah blah blah need more text for the comment length Blah blah blah need more text for the comment length
Flanpillow | 13 hours ago
I’ve been seriously considering cashing out my retirement. As a 37 year old I keep talking myself out of it as I’m constantly told it’s bad idea by everyone I’ve mentioned it to.
Jay-Cozier | 13 hours ago
Could an AI tax improve our outlook (i.e. taxing companies that manage AI software). I imagine that would at least improve employment and income prospects for Americans and encourage companies to ensure AI is used in-tandem with actual humans rather than a replacement piece for cheap labor.
WhittmanC | 3 hours ago
We just need to take all the social security and Medicare payments from the boomers at this point, they ran up the debt, they can foot the bill.