The U.S. can't tax itself out of financial trouble
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- Опубліковано 29 лют 2024
- "If you seized every dollar of every billionaire's wealth in America, their home, their car, their stocks, their vacation houses, their yachts, their businesses, you could fund the government one time for nine months. That's it," says Brian Riedl.
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The federal government spent $1.8 trillion in 2000. Next year it is projected to spend $6.5 trillion. That's an increase of approximately 261% in only 25 years. We are now paying more on interest for the debt than the entire defense budget. Things need to change quickly, but no politician on either side will touch it. So we continue down the road to ruin.
209% of that would be inflation.
@@nonyadamnbusiness9887 no it isn't. Inflation is maybe about 80% of that at most. The rest is just the government overspending.
We don't have a tax problem, we have a spending problem.
Hear hear!
I think we have both problems, but believ[ing in only problem] is ok for you to believe.
Cutting spending gores countless oxen -- it won't be much if any.
We have a spent problem. Our biggest debts are interest and social security. We need to go back in time and leave the country open for COVID. That bill is past due
Yes, spending on the too-big-to-fail corporations is a massive problem. Taxation reallocates the funds to assist, but it does not fix it. The issue lies with corporate power, the military industrial complex, and ridiculously stupid spending by neoliberal lawmakers.
Make Social Security optional. Teachers and Clergy are allowed to opt out. Everyone else should be allowed to opt out too.
If you let the majority opt out, they’ll vote to raid your savings when they retire broke.
Or just make it illegal for the government to borrow from social security.
Social security probably wont go away anytime soon but I would like at least it be you only start paying it at 25. The fact that we have kids as young as 14 paying medicare and social security on their very tiny income is ridiculous.
We need to STOP spending! Not tax more!🤬
Do you propose to default on the national debt?
@@authenticallysuperficial9874 wouldn’t have debt if they didn’t spend
That’s a part of the issue, but spending for many services is a requirement.
"you can't reasonably find 5% of GDP to cut" Agree to disagree.
Entitlements make up 2/3 of the budget. Easy lol
There is no amount of revenue that would quench the government's thirst for spending.
Spot-on! We can't keep spending money we don't have.
Why not?
"There are no financial solutions to politial problems." -TFM
I watched the full clip. Very good info.
This topic is where Reason is most strong!
Canada: "Hold my beer"...
10% income tax is 10% slavery
In some sense yes
Nope, any tax on earnings that is above 0% is 100% slavery.
If the government has the right to your earnings at all, then, the government owns 100% of your earnings and it allows you to keep whatever percentage it wants.
You can't escape them. Property tax income tax sales tax, tariffs, etc etc
@@FranciscoChile
In every sense
You can't tax yourself into prosperity, that would be like standing in a bucket & picking yourself up by the handle.
You can't argue tax policy with folksy analogies. That's like dancing a waltz with your cow before the band starts playing.
At a certain limit, taxation becomes a negative, it has a range of what is viable, and right now, we’re below the maximum viable amount, so let’s optimize taxation to its greatest viability, and work to ensure spending is done with less wastage overall.
The government needs to stop spending frivilously before it comes to the taxpayers and demands their income.
There's a cap on social security tax because there's a cap on it benefits.
This is why the role of government in our lives needs reevaluating. "Reasonable cuts" is bullshit if you are willing to toss out SS, Medicare, Medicaid.
> SS, Medicare, Medicaid
Not having extreme leftism is "unreasonable", according to some Reason guy.
Among other things. There's a _massive_ amount of wasted money just going into the bureaucracy in general. Lotta people doing nothing genuinely productive, just sitting in an office somewhere processing paperwork. Then there's the huge amount of government subsidies, guarantees, and the like. Our "foreign aid" packages...Dear gods, the amount of money we throw away on foreign aid is staggering, and the whole thing is basically a feel-good program that has precisely zero return. It's just _gone._
But I don't think it'll get solved _just_ with better fiscal management or ending terrible handout programs, or even a less expensive tax system. The people who vote to spend the money have got to suffer for their poor fiscal decisions. Right now, they don't, but they'll proudly turn around and tell the average person struggling with the debt the politicians created to "pay what you owe."
If we could print money to solve our problems then why do we pay taxes. The reality is the money has to be backed up by goods and services.💡
I think the federal government should tax the states a portion of each year's expenditures proportional to the state's population. The federal budget would always be balanced and the states could experiment with tax policies that would best attract taxpayers. Plus the IRS would be something like 500 people, including the janitors, and wouldn't need any information that wasn't public record.
The IRS should have 0 employees. Abolish the income tax.
@@01nmuskier you'd still need some federal tax, which means you'll still need federal tax collectors.
@@dirtyblueshirt that's not what I said.
I'd like to have Brian Riedl debate this with Robt. Reich.
With VAT there is a legal fiction, that the customer pays the tax.
So the tax men are absolutely merciless, when the business "steals" the customer's money, which he "voluntarily" wanted to pay to the government.
VAT is even worse than income tax.
Also: With VAT you have to do 13 tax declarations, instead of 1 per year.
The other issue with the VAT model is that it tends to apply recursively to products as they move through the supply chain.
Take a simple bag of potato chips as an example: You pay VAT on chips when you buy them from the grocery story. The grocery store paid VAT on the chips when they buy them from the distributor. The distributor paid VAT on them when they bought them from the company that made & packaged the chips. The chip manufacturer paid VAT on the potatoes and the oil that they bought from distributors. Those distributors paid VAT on the oil and potatoes that they bought from....
You see where I'm going: A VAT applies every time that "value" is "added". With the kind of highly complex and interconnected supply chain we have today, a product could easily have had VAT applied to it *dozens* of times before it ever gets to the shelf in the store you buy it from.
In practice, it's an Iceberg tax, the majority of the total tax the final customer actually pays tends to be hidden in the price of the item.
@@sumdood6784No.
What you describe would be the case for a sales tax on everything.
VAT is different.
@@moden321 "VAT" == "Value Added Tax", and applies any time that "value" is "added".
Ergo the example I provided is entirely accurate.
@@sumdood6784How about you don't insist on your ignorance, and look the difference between VAT and sales tax?
@@moden321 Simply shouting "Everything that guy said is wrong" is not a valid argument, but it's what you've done.
If you really believe I'm wrong, then prove it. Go into detail. Cite chapter and verse.
from a Danish point of view, the American tax system is complicated and inefficient.
VAT is a tax on consumption, therefore if you have more money and spend more money, you pay more tax
it is seen as a regressive tax because poor people generally spend all of the money, they have on necessities whereas wealthier people don't.
@@Noliving it is true, it will become a big % of the total of the poor income, but germany have low vat for food to fix the problem, and denmark have a high tax on yacht and cars for the rich to pay. IMF : individual’s consumption is one of the best observable indicators of their living standard, so consumption is potentially one of the most equitable of tax bases.
But It can TAX itself INTO TROUBLE
The government needs to stop spending money on pensioners, poor people, the military, student loans, and everything else.
On taxing the rich exorbitantly: You only get to do that once. Getting out of the mess isn't difficult except politically. Freeze the Federal budget at it's current dollar amount until we are out of debt. Inflation will eat away at the debt and growth will increase tax revenues.
We're paying 1 trillion in interest alone, while paying an historically low interest rate. Spending by government needs to stop
That's why we need the Fair Tax, not a VAT tax, not more income taxes.
Our government at all levels has grown to unattainable levels and debt has been the primary means for this growth, and now taxes must be raised for the system to continue to run. Debt expungement and massively slashing government programs across the board would be the best path forward.
Thing about taxing the rich is that the amount that they actually pay after they are allowed to deduct is massively low. Example: Warren Buffet between 2014 and had a wealth growth of $24.3 Billon but only had to report $125 Million and as a result only paid $23.7 Million in taxes. One needs to ask the question: did he benefit the U.S. Economy and Society for the $24.3-$0.125=$24.175 Billion over those 4 years. This is a particular problem for people when considering those like Buffet or Hedge Fund guys. How much do those people really benefit the Economy and Society relative to how much they pay in taxes. People have less of a problem with guys like Elon Musk that actually have their money at work much of the time building things and creating jobs and benefiting society. So, the tax system needs to be actually fair across the board along with all of the spending that needs to be balanced.
Do you refund their taxes when their wealth decreases?
What happens to the publicly traded companies when he pulls all the money out of his stocks (which is when he's taxed on it)?
How do you assess taxes on "wealth", when it's highly volatile?
@@michaelsorensen7567Exactly . When people talk about "billionaires" , what they precisely mean is POTENTIAL billionaires , if they were able to liquidate all of their assets at current market rates without crashing the market . I'm not saying they aren't rich , but tax calculations based on "net worth" belies a fundamental misconception of what wealth is and how markets work .
All questions that need answering. Clearly due to the amount of government spending revenue is far from sufficient. There are so many taxes that are needed including a % on every transaction done in stocks and bonds.@@michaelsorensen7567
You don't understand capital gains vs unrealized gains.
@@davidgood840 not to mention the Trump lawsuit in New York highlighting the subjective nature of "value"
Doesn't matter how high the tax rate is when you can afford to navigate the loopholes
01:40 the sheer amount of europeans that don't get this is hilarous. my country has finally 5 brackets of income tax. the latest was introduced in 2023 the 55% tax bracket. the usa the last time I checked had 7 an a taxless bracket of atleast 20k a year
Canada has the same issue.
I encourage debt repudiation.
Hardship for a few years then longterm growth rates would be above average for decades.
Taxes aren’t going up; spending isn’t going down. Both are politically unviable. Hyperinflation is the only way forward.
Really, the US government could spend a lot less. What they need is somebody ludicrously frugal like my grandfather (deceased) or me (still cheap and kicking) to go through every line of spending, and then they really must make those cuts.🤦
Of course you can solve this with a spending cut.
You cut spending by 100%. Problem solved. *So* many problems solved...
-An An-Cap Economist
Math. Not even once.
Right, because the effective top marginal tax rate isn't low as shit. 34% is pathetic. Do you know what we raised it to in order to recover from the great depression? 92% and it worked.
No it didn't help
@@crb4059 it provided social Security unemployment compensation insurance, and a whole host of other social safety programs that would otherwise not have had the government funding. Millions of government jobs! FDR literally went to his rich, business friends and said look if you don’t give up the taxes, the pitchforks are coming out guess what Warren Buffett said the same thing recently. History repeats itself economic systems are born the evolve and die. They collapse in on themselves from their internal contradictions as proven through studying Marx scientific analysis of capitalism.
Taxing the rich sure doesn’t seem to be working in California this year.
Duh. 😆
Correct. Yes. Thank you. Now can you all at Reason and Cato stop for one second to think why you keep asking the D.C. charnel house for permission to sit at their table? I don't want the communists world empire nor do I want yours.
The rich don’t take large salary’s so raising the SS tax limit only HURTS the middle and upper middle classes. Definitely not the rich who he claims to target. His claims about the average household having a 2% effective rate is ludicrous. This guy is missing lots of details
Who did this guy's makeup?
I think raising taxes on the rich & cutting budgets are a good starting point. We spend too much & don't get much out of what we spend. If the government can learn to be more effective with less dollars then it'll make the country better all around. If the company was run like a business in a capitalist environment where there's actual competition it would do a lot of good & the government would become more efficient & effective.
The bad thing this is not an actual problem they created the problem
He literally pointed out that the rich are already paying far more then their fair share in taxes. We are close to the top of the Laffer Curve on taxing the rich, so the next stop is taxing the middle class. But yes, cutting the budget should be a major priority.
I would say he is wrong: You can tax your way out of this. How? By taxing other nations out of our debt so to speak. Isn't that the lesson the rich/affluent have taught us? Why spend your ow money when you can force others to pay for things you want? Just wait there is a judgement day for us all. I'm in Christ, so I'm not worried about it. Looking forward to seeing what God has planned though.
We need to replace income tax with a VAT.
We need to cut all the administrative bloat.
The only issue I have with framing our tax system as progressive is that while it is progressive as an income tax, it is regressive for sales tax and property taxes. If I pay 7 percent tax on groceries that is a higher percentage of my income than a billionaire. Also many billionaires don't keep their wealth in a savings account, but in the form of owning stocks so they simply don't sell and if they do they pay 25 percent long term capital gains tax as opposed to a doctor paying 37 percent or more federally. Upper middle class gets screwed the most in our system. People who actually contribute the most get screwed the most. The hedge fund manager with no Value has the most assets and least taxes. Then the doctor pays the most and is burdened by a mountain of useless administrators. Then the nurses and trades ect.. pay the next most followed by a bloated useless administrative bloat at the next rung and then the bottom pays the least if not anything while taking tons of aid from obamacare and foodstamps which then are used to pay out all the administrators.
TAXATION is designed for each TAX PAYER, that is REGISTERED EVERSINCE, since it is NOT a REVERSAL ENTRIES, but ATTESTATIONS of POLICIES and RULES/Surrounding its IMPORTANCE, designed for EACH REGISTERED TAX PAYER. SPENDING are TAXES, and WITHOLDING OF TAXES, payable and RECEIVABLES of TAX PAYERS, since INCOME TAX is WITHOLDING TAX, it PROTECTS, businesses from FRAUD, COUNTERFEIT and FAKE, INCLUDING MONEY LAUNDERING, TAXATION IS/WAS DESIGNED to be BENEFICIAL for ALL TAX PAYER, be it CONSUMERS, BUSINESSES are to reconcile-REPORT their TAXES, since WE'RE NOT TAX HAVEN.
Saying the bottom half pays 0 doesn't take into consideration things like sales tax. The rich and the poor pay the same tax on a gallon of gas but it hits the poor person a lot more. I'm not whining, just saying how little someone in my position cares about the grocery bill or gas prices and other things that affect most everyday people in that bottom 50-75% of the country
The U.S. federal government does not collect sales tax or fuel at the pump tax. Save your progressivism for your state.
The wealthy person pays more in sales tax overall because they buy a lot more than gasoline.
No one is forcing the poor person to remain poor except the poor person.
Yes if I just control how the numbers are counted,and only count what supports my goal, I can ensure that my talking point is correct.
We use income and death taxes to subsidize alcohol sales. How about a Luxury tax on Liquor at the rate of an hour of minimum wage on each 750 ml bottle? Ban alcohol advertising from public transit, TV and the Internet.
strawman much?
Libertarians still dont get that the most important thing is power.
Yep. Politics is, in the end, nothing but a desire to dominate others.
From a Marxist perspective, the statement is inaccurate because it oversimplifies the complexities of wealth distribution and accumulation under capitalism. Wealth is not a fixed, stagnant pool that can be evenly distributed once and then remain static. In reality, wealth is constantly being generated, accumulated, and reinvested within the capitalist system.
When billionaires' wealth is seized, it does not simply disappear or become stagnant; it is redistributed in various ways, such as through government spending, investment, or consumption. This redistribution can lead to the creation of new wealth, further accumulation, and the potential for future economic growth.
Additionally, the statement fails to consider the broader societal and economic implications of seizing billionaires' wealth. Such a drastic measure could have unintended consequences on the economy, including potential disruptions to investment, job creation, and overall economic stability.
In sum, the statement's assertion that seizing billionaires' wealth would only fund the government for a limited period fails to account for the dynamic and interconnected nature of wealth accumulation and distribution in a capitalist system. Wealth is not a fixed entity and its redistribution can have far-reaching impacts beyond a one-time government funding boost.
You're assuming this wealth is "Fixed" and not ALWAYS ACCUMILATING. You're also forgetting about tax evasion tactics that could be cracked down on as well. Or did you forget we have a regressive tax program in this country.... For REAL Economic news visit my channel.
Tax the rich (capital gains at income rates, wealth at income rates) , cut military spending 50%, and that's a huge start
No. Wealth tax is immoral and unconstitutional.
Cut entitlements by 50% and you'll have decreased expenses by more than the military budget.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sick of being world police and ready to reduce military spending, just pointing out that there are MUCH bigger line items we could look into cutting too
You're a leftist.
@@michaelsorensen7567 I agree, but cutting ss, Medicare, and Medicaid isn't realistic. It is more realistic to eliminate the fica ceiling to fund those programs fully
@@MGPCycling Says the socialist. You're not interested in cutting debt, you just hate people who have more than you, and you want government to use (or threaten) violence against them to take it away.
Government can confiscate the wealth of ALL millionaires (and above) and fund the federal government for a full 100 days before it runs out of money completely. Then what will you do? Drain their blood and sell it?