How are we going to pay for all this shit?

[adav8s28]

Originally Posted by The_Waco_Kid

Clinton added 1.3 trillion to the debt overall and it was Newt Gingrich and republicans who forced Clinton to agree to a balanced budget.

The point is/was for the accounting period of 2001 for the Federal Government budget the result ended in a surplus of 130 billion dollars. Whose idea was it to use the tax tables of 2001? The Bush43 tax cuts changed the tax rate percentages that were used in the 2001 tax table.

It appears that Gingrich and the republicans did not force Bush43 to use a balanced budget. Bush43 had Federal Government budget deficits in every single year of his term as president.


https://economicsinsider.com/us-fiscal-deficit-by-year/

[pxmcc]

^^correct. Clinton got it down. dubya fucked everything up with his tax cuts and unfunded war, and it's been deficit fuckery every year since. smdh.

let's sit down like some adults at the kitchen table and figure this shit out. what fat can we cut-Medicare Advantage comes to mind-while keeping the muscle, and where can we generate more revenue without tanking the economy, like someone picking up some side hustles (and making sure Trump and Elon Musk pays their fair share). and i'm not talking about a wealth tax, which i oppose, just paying a percentage of income equal to the billionaires' secretaries..

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by Texas Contrarian

While
Sanders argues that the measure is an essentially conservative compromise that would leave most billionaires’ fortunes intact. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s holdings, according to estimates from Sanders’s office, would go from $833 billion to $792 billion. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s would go from $220 billion to $209 billion. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s would shrink from $218 billion to $207 billion. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

…Sanders’s revenue estimates were provided by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two economics professors at the University of California at Berkeley. The economists assume a 10 percent rate of “tax evasion/avoidance,” and argue that the existing “exit tax” for renouncing American citizenship would make doing so unattractive for the targeted billionaires.

What a dumb ass. And a liar. If the billionaire’s after tax return on his net worth equals inflation, then after 30 years said billionaire would be worth 21.5% of what he started with, adjusting for inflation. Elon Musk and Bill Gates each created over 200,000 jobs. Jeff Bezos created around 1.5 million and Sam Walton 2.1 million. Get rid of the billionaire class and you’ll kneecap America.

Well, have at it Bernie, Ro, Manny and Gabe. Kill the geese that laid the golden eggs. Saez and Zucman by the way, the brains behind this, are Manchurian economists. They were infiltrated by the French to destroy American exceptionalism. Their mission is to MALF (Make America Like France.)

[eccieuser9500]

Originally Posted by Tiny

What a dumb ass. And a liar. If the billionaire’s after tax return on his net worth equals inflation, then after 30 years said billionaire would be worth 21.5% of what he started with, adjusting for inflation. Elon Musk and Bill Gates each created over 200,000 jobs. Jeff Bezos created around 1.5 million and Sam Walton 2.1 million.

Well, have at it Bernie, Ro, Manny and Gabe. Kill the geese that laid the golden eggs. Saez and Zucman by the way, the brains behind this, are Manchurian economists. They were infiltrated by the French to destroy American exceptionalism. Their mission is to MALF (Make America Like France.)

Look, the truth is . . .

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by pxmcc

… i'm not talking about a wealth tax, which i oppose, just paying a percentage of income equal to the billionaires' secretaries..

Do you think they should get a tax cut pxmcc? Well yeah, why not. Money left in the hands of the billionaires will do more good than money squandered, er sorry, spent by the federal government

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

Look, the truth is . . .

I can’t listen to that now eccieuser because I’m on a plane, but yeah, I give Sanders a lot of credit for standing up to the neoconservatives. And for being the strongest anti-war Senator, possibly save Rand Paul. I also usually agree with him on social issues. It’s his taxation and spending agendas that suck IMO.

[eccieuser9500]

Google AI:

Recent analysis indicates that a potential or ongoing war with Iran could significantly impact the U.S. economy, specifically driving up the cost of groceries, gasoline, and electricity for American families. The financial strain of such a conflict—estimated at $1 billion a day in direct military costs—is viewed by critics as competing with essential domestic needs, including food affordability.

• Supply Chain Disruptions:Conflicts in the Middle East, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz, threaten to disrupt shipping routes, causing shortages and price increases for imports.
  
  
• Rising Energy Costs: War often drives up oil and gas prices, which in turn increases the costs of manufacturing nitrogen-based fertilizers, directly pushing up food production expenses.

Way to go retards. Thanks for voting in the dangerous idiot.

[eccieuser9500]

Originally Posted by Tiny

I can’t listen to that now eccieuser because I’m on a plane, but yeah, I give Sanders a lot of credit for standing up to the neoconservatives. And for being the strongest anti-war Senator, possibly save Rand Paul. I also usually agree with him on social issues. It’s his taxation and spending agendas that suck IMO.

If they suck, they should suck for everyone.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by eccieuser9500

If they suck, they should suck for everyone.

Agreed, for taxes and hookers. Everyone should feel the bite. That’s for taxes. The hookers should suck all regardless of race, color or creed. No biting though.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by pxmcc

...let's sit down like some adults at the kitchen table and figure this shit out. what fat can we cut-Medicare Advantage comes to mind-while keeping the muscle, and where can we generate more revenue without tanking the economy, like someone picking up some side hustles (and making sure Trump and Elon Musk pays their fair share). and i'm not talking about a wealth tax, which i oppose, just paying a percentage of income equal to the billionaires' secretaries...

Sitting down and working out a deficit reduction plan is what we ought to be able to count on our elected "leaders" to do. Sadly, though, they abdicated their responsibilities in that area quite a few years ago.

On the spending side, let's get real here. We're in a place now where, as I noted earlier, raising all tax rates -- including for the middle-class -- back to Clinton-era levels would only take care of about 25% of current deficit spending.

There are several reasons for that. The population has aged significantly over the last 25 years as tens of millions of baby boomers are now over 65. At the same time, health care costs have increased much faster than the consumer price index, as ill-conceived and irresponsibly implemented healthcare "reform" has allowed the nation's all-in costs to rise to levels 50% (or more) higher per capita than is the case in other advanced nations.

Also, the federal debt held by the public is now 100% or slightly more of annual GDP. That's close to 3X what it was (as a percentage of GDP) in 2000. Consequently, annual interest costs on accumulated debt have now passed the trillion dollar mark and are now about 3.3% of GDP. Obviously, that means that interest payments on the debt are now at least $650 billion higher than they would be today if we had stabilized the debt/GDP level at FY2000 levels. (That's significantly more than would be raised by returning all tax rates to 1990s levels.)

And no one is going to substantially cut or reform Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. That's just a quick way to get landslided out of office.

That leaves the revenue side.

First, let's dismiss the ideas that range from ineffective or moderately bad to utterly terrible.

Raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 25%, as someone suggested a few posts ago, is not exactly a great way to increase revenue. First, if pushed too far, it would render US firms less competitive in global markets. That was a big problem when the US did not keep up with corporate tax-cutting effected in most European countries back in the 1990s. The result was "inversions" where US companies moved production to lower-tax jurisdictions 10-15 years ago.

Also an increase in the corporate tax to 25%, according to most credible modeling, would shave about 3% or slightly more off US equity prices (all other things being equal). Since most equity is owned beneficially by middle class Americans in 401k, pension funds, and other savings or retirement accounts, that's not exactly a big plus.

Jacking up capital gains tax rates to much higher levels, another favorite hobby horse of progressives like AOC and Bernie, is an even worse idea. To see the wreckage that would leave in its wake, just look at the post-Watergate 1970s, when liberals pushed the rate to 40% (or even more for some taxpayers). That simply backfired, and Jimmy Carter signed legislation in 1978 reducing it to 28%. Not surprisingly, the capital gains tax produced much more revenue thereafter.

Taxing the unrealized gains of very wealthy people is another harebrained idea, for at least two fundamental reasons. Rich people, like some of the tech founders, would have to sell significant holdings in order to pay the tax, obviously putting downward pressure on share prices. Since most stock is owned by people who are not wealthy, this is a poor deal for America's middle class. Even worse, the Sanders tax plan would, over the next few years, chase trillions of dollars of investment capital into private equity, where it would be much harder to value -- and thus harder to tax. In the long run, middle class investors would be shut out of the opportunity to participate in the "next Nvidia" (whatever it might be)

With today's level of spending, the only way to raise sufficient tax revenue while shackling the economy in the least growth-stifling way possible is by shifting a large portion of the tax base to consumption. A couple of years ago, the Tax Foundation published a report outlining some of the key points:

https://taxfoundation.org/research/a...vs-income-tax/

[pxmcc]

^^imagine you got to be the tax and spend czar. build an AI model using CBO scoring that would result in a small surplus under your plan, which could be used to start paying down the debt.

my problem with consumption taxes is that they are super regressive. the only consumption tax i like is a carbon tax, to save the planet. but i suppose a small sales tax would not be a deal breaker, if it helped us to get to a balanced budget and a path to paying off the debt.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by pxmcc

^^imagine you got to be the tax and spend czar. build an AI model using CBO scoring that would result in a small surplus under your plan, which could be used to start paying down the debt.

my problem with consumption taxes is that they are super regressive. the only consumption tax i like is a carbon tax, to save the planet. but i suppose a small sales tax would not be a deal breaker, if it helped us to get to a balanced budget and a path to paying off the debt.

This is an amazing thread! Here we are, almost five years in, and no one in a position of political power -- in either party -- seems to be interested in engaging in anything other than magical thinking. No one bothered to set forth a coherent plan to pay for the shit rammed through back in 2021, let alone that being imagined today.

Consumption taxes certainly are regressive, which is why many of their supporters recommend pairing them with substantial means-tested cash payments to mitigate their regressivity, or a "prebate" like that suggested by supporters of the FairTax. The idea is that Americans with incomes near or below the median would not be harmed, while households in the upper-middle class would pay a lot more in taxes.

The carbon tax is similarly regressive, which is why its supporters almost without exception seek to pair it with some sort of "dividend" to lower-income households so they would not be further impoverished by $6+/gallon gasoline prices. However, if we redistribute a large portion of the tax's revenue, we obviously would not reduce the deficit by much.

There's simply no way around the fact that any tax system capable of raising significantly more revenue is necessarily much less progressive than our current one. Europe's social democracies tax high income earners and the wealthy at somewhat higher rates than we pay in the US, but hit the middle class harder by a far larger percentage.

Most European countries pay for all that stuff with something close to what some economists refer to as the "Nordic Model."

Check this quick rundown from the Tax Foundation:

https://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-s...ment-spending/

Of course, we don't spend nearly as much as a percentage of GDP than the wealthier European counties, though we do spend 23+% of GDP at the federal level, while the corresponding number in FY2000 was about 18%.

Any way you slice it, you're not going to get very far on a deficit-reduction journey without extracting a whole lot more revenue from upper-middle-class households in the $150-500K range.

[Tiny]

Excellent posts TC, much better than anything you'd find in the MSM or from AI, except of course for Gemini's estimate of a 78% probability of the regime leaving Iran in the next 30 days.

With respect to Medicare and Social Security, couldn't they just increase the withholding rates to shore up the system? We've done it before, and that may be the only politically palatable solution.

I would hope that the politicians could spend more efficiently and less wastefully, and that could help a lot. But maybe I'm a Pollyanna.

[adav8s28]

Originally Posted by Tiny

OK, The COVID relief bill just passed will cost 1.9 trillion. Biden has just proposed another 2.2 trillion for Democratic priorities and infrastructure, and reportedly will propose another 2 trillion spending bill in April for more Democratic Party priorities. That adds up to about 6 trillion in round numbers.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Joe Manchin believe the $2.2 trillion just announced is too low. AOC wants it upped to $10 trillion and Manchin wants $4 trillion.

And then there's the Green New Deal, beloved by all the progressive Democratic Politicians. The American Action Forum estimates that would take $51 trillion to $93 trillion over the next ten years.

So most of this money is supposed to come from people who make more than $1 million a year, and all of it from those who make over $400,000 per year. President Biden has promised people making less than $400,000 per year will not have their tax rates increased.

Here's a link to the IRS tax statistics:

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-t...d-gross-income

The latest year available is 2018. In that year, the total taxable income of people making over $1 million per year was $1.6 trillion. If you add the amount of taxable income of people making from $500,000 to a million a year, that goes up to $2.3 trillion.

However, these people are already paying a large % of their income in federal and state income taxes to help pay for existing programs. Let's say 30% of their income to be conservative -- I'm pretty sure it's more than that. That means if you take every dime they make, that they're not already paying in taxes, you end up with $1.1 trillion ($1 million cutoff) or $1.6 trillion ($500,000 cutoff) to pay for all this shit the Democratic Party politicians are proposing.

There's a snowball's chance in hell these politicians can do what they want to do by just taxing the rich.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has reintroduced a Wealth Tax bill recently that has a 2% tax on households over 50 million . The bill also has a 1% tax on households over 1 billion. This is estimated to raise 6 Trillion over a ten year period. Do this for twenty years you could reduce the rolling debt by 12 Trillion. That's if the yearly Federal Budget deficit becomes a small surplus like in fiscal year 2001 or neutral. The tax tables would need adjusting. I say go back to the tax table before the Bush43 tax cuts. In that table the Tax rate percentage for the 7th tax bracket was 40%.


Both parties spend more money than what is collected when they have control of the executive branch. I don't see how the rolling debt will ever be reduced without a temporary wealth tax and changing the tax tables. Senator Warren's proposal does not need to be permanent. It should be implemented on a temporary basis, like at least two decades.


https://www.barrons.com/articles/eli...KMGBOKhw%3D%3D

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by adav8s28

Senator Elizabeth Warren has reintroduced a Wealth Tax bill recently that has a 2% tax on households over 50 million . The bill also has a 1% tax on households over 1 billion. This is estimated to raise 6 Trillion over a ten year period. Do this for twenty years you could reduce the rolling debt by 12 Trillion. That's if the yearly Federal Budget deficit becomes a small surplus like in fiscal year 2001 or neutral. The tax tables would need adjusting. I say go back to the tax table before the Bush43 tax cuts. In that table the Tax rate percentage for the 7th tax bracket was 40%.


Both parties spend more money than what is collected when they have control of the executive branch. I don't see how the rolling debt will ever be reduced without a temporary wealth tax and changing the tax tables. Senator Warren's proposal does not need to be permanent. It should be implemented on a temporary basis, like at least two decades.


https://www.barrons.com/articles/eli...KMGBOKhw%3D%3D

Hi adav8s28, Fuck that cunt. I hate Elizabeth Warren.

I was the executor of an estate. We estimated the value of everything owned by the deceased, and backed it up with appraisals and an expert's report. That took hundreds of hours, not counting the appraisers and the expert. Then even though the estate owed no tax, we were audited. That took hundreds more hours.

With a wealth tax, the taxpayer would have to do that every year.

I already spend a third of the year working to pay my tax bill and maybe another month doing the paperwork necessary to prepare my returns. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend the rest of the year working on Liz's wealth tax return. If they ever were to pass a wealth tax that affected me, I'd leave the country, no ifs ands or buts.

And that's what's happening right now in California, because of the proposed, one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Billionaires are leaving.

There are more efficient and fair ways to tax.

As to a 40% maximum tax, we're already there when you add Obama's 3.8% NIIT. The maximum rate is 40.8%.