Has anybody glanced at the debt clock recently? (U.S. National Debt Talk.)

[Bacle]

Guys, no one really cares about the national debt except for fiscal conservatives.

To everyone else it's a non-issue.

The Federal Reserve and Treasury Dept. will just print more money, or fuck with interest rates if there are issues, and deficit spending us never going to go away. A balanced budget is a farce to try to force on a national level gov (private finance rules don't apply to nation-states), and it's rather foolish to think many people outside fiscal conservatives and Wall Street actually care about it.

 

[Morphic Tide]

The thing about lowered taxes increasing revenue is probably largely it ends up with extra dips cancelling most of the cut. Suppose you had $3,000 more on hand over a year or two from slashes taxes.

Unless that is pocketed or put in long-term investments, you personally are having that taxed. Then anyone you payed it to has to pay income tax. Then whatever they spend it on goes through income and sales tax.

This repeats until the money is all taxed, deposited, or invested, and the latter two are surprisingly rare. The growth is in that the same money is spent more times.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

No.

Raising taxes does not solve the problem, has not solved the problem, and never will solve the problem.

The problem always has and always will be government spending.

Sure if you want to get technical I won't deny if the government had actually done their job of balancing the budget since day one, this would not have been a problem.

But to pull that out a zero hour and state that all we kneed are a few cut's and the debt problem is solved is just plain unrealistic in all regards.

The only way that we will pay down the national debt, is by forcing actual fiscal discipline. The only way that that will happen, is a change in the culture, because there's just not enough people who care about the national debt to make it happen right now.

I agree, but your getting into the same argument I was making of too little, too late.

The Government isn't going to raise taxes due to the unpopularity of it and cut's to spending are just as popular to the welfare queens and Military IC, so it isn't happening, in fact it's more likely we will see across the board tax raises before we ever see these 'cut's' you are dreaming of.

Ever since Reagan the 'R's' have promised tax cuts and cut's to big government spending with only lip service ever done for the later, as every president since him has only added to the budget.

1. Baseline budgeting must be done away with. If you're not familiar with this insane practice, it's where each government department already assumes a % increase to their budget each year. But that's not referred to as growth, if you increase their budget past that, it's considered an increase, and if you slow the rate of growth, that's called a budget cut, even if their budget is still actually growing.

2. Balanced budget amendment. If the Federal Government is not in a formal congressionally-declared war, there will be no deficit spending whatsoever. This should be backed with a measure where if congress fails to pass a balanced budget for two years running, all members of congress are immediately booted from office, and ineligible for re-election in that year.

I agree, but please keep dreaming, you as well as I very well know that neither of these are happening no matter who is in charge, unless we are already up sh*t creek as far as the economy's concerned and by that point it will be too late.

To think that raising taxes will actually help get the national budget under control shows an unfortunate ignorance of history, and human behavior.

I didn't mention tax cuts because I felt that they went without saying, to get government spending down to a manageable level one must.

1. Cut unnecessary spending to free up government assets and money.
2. Increasing taxes for the the same purposes of acquiring funds.

The fact is that unless your making your projections off the infinite growth of the taxpayer base like the IRS and the economy foolishly do, the only way to increase funds gather from the same group of people is the later.

These two things are what would have to be done to get the debt payed down in any amount of time, but the fact remains that neither are feasible, nor seriously being discussed for the same reason.

Politics.

And for future reference, don't call a man ignorant when the argument you are proposing is just the opposite side of the same coin as far as argument's go and just as unlikely to happen as the solution.

Both party's will see us sink to the bottom of sh*t creek and drown before 'anything' is done that fact won't change regardless of the lip service paid to 'cutting big government spending' or 'taxing the rich'.

Yes. Keep taxes low so the economy grows and the tax base expands...you bring in more taxes as the economy grows because more people become tax payers, and the more they make the more taxes are getting paid. You grow the economy by loosening regulations, lowering taxes and making it easy and cheap to do business in this country.. on top of that, keep spending low, and That's how you pay off these debts.

I disagree, because despite saying that countless times, every Republican since Reagan has campaigned on that and everyone has only managed to increase the debt. That said it's theoretically possible just not in practice.

To really get the debt down, we would need someone like Calvin Coolidge who is uncorrupt, responsible, straight faced and straight forward focused on cutting government spending to the exclusion of all else, and says screw the influences and lobbyist, but that isn't going to happen, because people would rather pay lip service to the concept over actually practicing it.

It all boils down to the fact that we never had rules for government spending since the start. to prevent reckless spending for partisan reasons over fiscal responsibility.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Guys, no one really cares about the national debt except for fiscal conservatives.

Because it isn't talked about enough.

Every person I've spoken to on the matter, in Britain no less, is at least concerned by how much we spend if not in agreement with me that we need to spend less. Normies are not stupid.

 

[Bacle]

Because it isn't talked about enough.

Every person I've spoken to on the matter, in Britain no less, is at least concerned by how much we spend if not in agreement with me that we need to spend less. Normies are not stupid.

The reason it isn't talked about is because the obsession with national level 'balanced budgets' is not really prevalent among much of the general public.

Most of them understand the rules for private finance and nation-state level finance are much, much different.

 

[DarthOne]

The reason it isn't talked about is because the obsession with national level 'balanced budgets' is not really prevalent among much of the general public.

Most of them understand the rules for private finance and nation-state level finance are much, much different.

that doesn't mean its not a concern or should not be addressed.

 

[LordsFire]

1. Cut unnecessary spending to free up government assets and money.
2. Increasing taxes for the the same purposes of acquiring funds.

You at one hand propose the same thing that I say is necessary (though I agree that getting government spending under control is a monumental task), and on the other hand suggest something that will make things worse.

It is true that cutting taxes has not brought government spending under control. The only time that happened in living memory is when the Republicans took control of congress for the first time in 40 years in the 90's. Note that the Democrats had controlled both chambers of the legislature for 40 years. Back when he was a fresh-faced firebreather, Newt Gingrich got shit done. Why did they actually stop increasing the debt? Because they brought spending under control.

It can be done, but it's not easy, and it's very easy to reverse.


Raising taxes on the other hand, does not help at all. It will at most briefly increase revenue, at the cost of decreased revenue in the long run. More likely, it just lowers revenue full stop, and that's just looking at it purely as a measure of dealing with the debt, not considering all the other knock-on effects.

Raising taxes will make things worse, not better.

Cutting taxes might not solve the debt problem, but it'll at least help, and have the added benefit of helping actual human beings live better lives.

As long as you keep pushing the idea that raising taxes will help, I will continue to consider you ignorant on this issue.

 

[Bacle]

that doesn't mean its not a concern or should not be addressed.

True.

However, it does mean that fiscal conservatives and such need to realize it is not a hot button issue for many, and that harping on it is not politically useful.

This is part of why the Right has the issues it does.

Too many on the Right want to keep harping on old issues that are either settled as far as most of the public is concerned (gay marriage for example), or they want to act like 'niche' issues (and nat'l debt is a niche issue to most people) actually matter to the majority of the populace.

The more I've seen of the Right, the more I understand why it keeps losing ground, and the more I wish we had a real third party alternative.

 

[LindyAF]

that doesn't mean its not a concern or should not be addressed.

I mean it isn't really. Most of the national debt is owed in bonds to US citizens IIRC, and it's sovereign debt, there's no collateral, and since the DC government is the global hegemon it's not like anyone can enforce the debt against it. The only consequence for even literally defaulting on it would be that it would be harder for the DC government to get loans in the future and that it would get them at worse interest rates, and since the DC government can print it's own currency (unlike, say, Greece) it can just "money printer go brrrr" itself out anyway.

Yes, all of that would have pretty severe negative consequences. But it doesn't matter, because the debt is too big to be paid, and the country is frankly a demographic timebomb before it's a a debt timebomb, which renders it kinda moot. Why would a government formed by a "coalition of the ascendant" in a majority-minority country which eschews the heritage American people and views the American people and our founding and origin as a crime view itself as beholden to a debt America incurred? Alternatively, from the perspective that radical political change is necessary, what responsibility would a state which actually represented and advanced the interests of the historic American nation have to a debt incurred by our current government?

Debt-hawking seems in practice to mostly function as an excuse for conservatives to not actually deliver value to their voters while in office, which is a frankly garbage strategy in the long run, politically.

 

[Robovski]

It does seem like we have bigger fish to fry and the debt problem isn't one we should expend capital belaboring. Just keeping the racists from power and overturning the whole country should be our first mission. Yes, deficit spending should be on such as infrastructure or investment but really being tight with the purse strings while we allow the blatant undermining of our society to corporate and useful idiot racists just allows the opposition to paint conservatives as obstructionist do nothings.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

SNIP

Cutting a lot will hurt the military and social security in a way so by that very definition would cutting not hurt some? If I proposed a five dollar tax hike a year to only go towards repaying the national debt a year after the budget has been balanced (62 million taxpayers x 5 = 250,000,000 a year) are you seriously saying you will cry uncle?

The fact is I was talking about both Hillary and Donald in the sense that they were talking the talk while not walking the walk. Both had plans which raised the debt by billions/trillions of dollars and neither had any feasible excuse for how they were planning to reduce it.

Fact! to pay off debt the government needs money!

Fact! If the government isn't going the inflation route they need to either (1) raise taxes to meet there monetary obligations or (2) cut unnecessary ones!

Fact! Neither were going to do either of those things!

The above only approves my point! I am not proposing raising taxes to unbearable levels merely advocating it as acceptable to help U.S. get a move on towards paying this mountain down before it becomes a burden we can't handle.

If either Trump or Hillary cared they would have bought up these options, It doesn't mater if the economy is fifty times more powerful due to a president's actions, if tax levels remain the same government revenue remains the same, as the pool of taxpayers doesn't increase with it.

Government spending doesn't decrease + economy growing bigger + taxpool and rates not changing = We are still up shit creek without a paddle about to hit a sea of debt.

You can lower government spending to balance the budget of course, and give a slight increase to taxes to supplement the issue of paying down the debt, or you can keep government spending and raise taxes to keep it going that way, making everyone a wage slave effectively.

Ultimately I prefer the former option, as I would gladly pay five bucks a year or more to help deal with this problem as long as it doesn't become a massive burden on me.

I get raising taxes isn't a crowd pleaser but sometimes it's necessary even if it's not universally liked, and I say that as someone who despised taxes, or are you stating I am insane enough to be advocating something I would only stand to lose from if it weren't useful?

It can be done, Coolidge did it abet when the the national debt was also low and when the government wasn't weighed down, by a massive military, social security and other welfare programs, but can in theory be done and will it be done is another matter.

As long as you keep pushing the idea that raising taxes will help, I will continue to consider you ignorant on this issue.

If you chose to maintain your reasoning in the face of any and all facts feel free, taxes being raised does not always equal negative growth, case and point, most of the WW2 debt was payed off in the late forties through early fifties on the bases of increased taxes and war bonds and would have been payed off had the trend continued.

 

[Terthna]

Cutting a lot will hurt the military and social security in a way so by that very definition would cutting not hurt some? If I proposed a five dollar tax hike a year to only go towards repaying the national debt a year after the budget has been balanced (62 million taxpayers x 5 = 250,000,000 a year) are you seriously saying you will cry uncle?

The fact is I was talking about both Hillary and Donald in the sense that they were talking the talk while not walking the walk. Both had plans which raised the debt by billions/trillions of dollars and neither had any feasible excuse for how they were planning to reduce it.

Fact! to pay off debt the government needs money!

Fact! If the government isn't going the inflation route they need to either (1) raise taxes to meet there monetary obligations or (2) cut unnecessary ones!

Fact! Neither were going to do either of those things!

The above only approves my point! I am not proposing raising taxes to unbearable levels merely advocating it as acceptable to help U.S. get a move on towards paying this mountain down before it becomes a burden we can't handle.

If either Trump or Hillary cared they would have bought up these options, It doesn't mater if the economy is fifty times more powerful due to a president's actions, if tax levels remain the same government revenue remains the same, as the pool of taxpayers doesn't increase with it.

Government spending doesn't decrease + economy growing bigger + taxpool and rates not changing = We are still up shit creek without a paddle about to hit a sea of debt.

You can lower government spending to balance the budget of course, and give a slight increase to taxes to supplement the issue of paying down the debt, or you can keep government spending and raise taxes to keep it going that way, making everyone a wage slave effectively.

Ultimately I prefer the former option, as I would gladly pay five bucks a year or more to help deal with this problem as long as it doesn't become a massive burden on me.

I get raising taxes isn't a crowd pleaser but sometimes it's necessary even if it's not universally liked, and I say that as someone who despised taxes, or are you stating I am insane enough to be advocating something I would only stand to lose from if it weren't useful?

It can be done, Coolidge did it abet when the the national debt was also low and when the government wasn't weighed down, by a massive military, social security and other welfare programs, but can in theory be done and will it be done is another matter.

If you chose to maintain your reasoning in the face of any and all facts feel free, taxes being raised does not always equal negative growth, case and point, most of the WW2 debt was payed off in the late forties through early fifties on the bases of increased taxes and war bonds and would have been payed off had the trend continued.

Raising taxes means reducing the economy (because people will have less money to spend on it), which reduces tax revenue.

 

[Urabrask Revealed]

pass a balanced budget amendment that mandates the Fed cannot operate at a deficit excepting in a time of formally-declared war, and during time of piece, must be paying enough into the debt to actually reduce the principle each year.

That would just result in the Feddies declaring a continueous war to avoid precisly that.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The national debt doesn't really matter, it's all imaginary money anyway and no one fully knows how the system works. But it will be used as an excuse to keep extracting more and more money from the American people.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

Raising taxes means reducing the economy (because people will have less money to spend on it), which reduces tax revenue.

It depends on how much is being ask of you, If say you were only loosing between twenty five cents and fifteen dollars a year it probably wouldn't affect your day to day spending habits at all in any way.

Moderation is needed in all things fiscal, be it acquiring debt, paying for it or adding and cutting taxes, it's easy to over indulge.

The national debt doesn't really matter, it's all imaginary money anyway and no one fully knows how the system works. But it will be used as an excuse to keep extracting more and more money from the American people.

It's imaginary and that's why you don't want the system to be run into the ground when a reset is needed, because that will screw the little people over more than anybody else.

 

[Terthna]

It depends on how much is being ask of you, If say you were only loosing between twenty five cents and fifteen dollars a year it probably wouldn't affect your day to day spending habits at all in any way.

Moderation is needed in all things fiscal, be it acquiring debt, paying for it or adding and cutting taxes, it's easy to over indulge.

It's imaginary and that's why you don't want the system to be run into the ground when a reset is needed, because that will screw the little people over more than anybody else.

If you're going to talk about screwing over the little people, why don't you talk about all the quirks of our tax code the big people used to avoid paying taxes at all? As because of that, raising taxes to any degree is going to disproportionately affect the former the most, and the latter almost not at all. You want more money to pay off the debt? Make it so the rich can no longer shirk their fiscal responsibility to this country, and the government will be swimming in money.

 

[LordsFire]

Snip.

Your 'facts' are wrong.



I linked this to the point where it starts going into tax rates vs actual government revenue. That section is about four and a half minutes.

If you're going to talk about screwing over the little people, why don't you talk about all the quirks of our tax code the big people used to avoid paying taxes at all? As because of that, raising taxes to any degree is going to disproportionately affect the former the most, and the latter almost not at all. You want more money to pay off the debt? Make it so the rich can no longer shirk their fiscal responsibility to this country, and the government will be swimming in money.

The section immediately after that, which is about another 4:15, also covers how in fact, 'the rich' are basically the only people effectively paying taxes in the first place. Exceptions exist (like myself in the bottom 20% income bracket) who pay more money in than we get out even though we aren't rich, but overwhelmingly, only people in the top 40% actually pay more money in than they get out.


I recommend both of you watch the entire video, it covers a number of relevant subjects in very concise and easily-comprehensible terms, but those two points are most immediately germane to the discussion.


Now, to address the idea of a 'five dollar a year' tax hike or something similarly small.

So, you said 5 dollars a year, on 62 million taxpayers. That's 310 million, not 250 million, but it's irrelevant. The direct federal debt was 20 trillion dollars ~5 years ago, and more like 150 trillion in unfunded obligations. Let's count that in relative zeroes.

310,000,000
Vs.
20,000,000,000,000.

Do you see the problem?

Let me put it for you another way. At a rate of 310,000,000 per year, it would take a mere 64,516 years to pay that debt off. Count the unfunded obligations, rather than just the direct cash debt of 5 years ago (and it's much bigger now), and you've got ~7.5 times that, or 450,000 years to pay off the debt.

So, let's get to a more practical timescale for paying off the debt. Say 64 years. To do that, we'd need to jack up your 5 dollar payment by 1000x, or 5000 dollars.

Which is a third of my annual income.

You really think that isn't going to have a deleterious effect on the economy?

Let's multiply that by 7.5 times, to represent the actual full debt, not just the immediately-visible debt, and that becomes 37,500 dollars. So, I roughly need to increase my income by 2.5 times now just to pay the tax burden.


So no. Raising taxes will not solve the problem, and in point of fact it will not even contribute to solving the problem. It will only and can only make things worse as it cuts into economic growth, which is the only way we even have a chance at getting out of this debt hole.

As to those of you who think that there will be no meaningful effects of continuing to run up debt like this, it will, and the absolute minimum reason for this is that it will eventually cause runaway hyperinflation, but I'll address that in a different post.

 

[ATP]

one of Reasons why China is so bold is that they knew that USA must collapse becouse of its depts about 2040.

 

[Terthna]

Your 'facts' are wrong.



I linked this to the point where it starts going into tax rates vs actual government revenue. That section is about four and a half minutes.




The section immediately after that, which is about another 4:15, also covers how in fact, 'the rich' are basically the only people effectively paying taxes in the first place. Exceptions exist (like myself in the bottom 20% income bracket) who pay more money in than we get out even though we aren't rich, but overwhelmingly, only people in the top 40% actually pay more money in than they get out.


I recommend both of you watch the entire video, it covers a number of relevant subjects in very concise and easily-comprehensible terms, but those two points are most immediately germane to the discussion.


Now, to address the idea of a 'five dollar a year' tax hike or something similarly small.

So, you said 5 dollars a year, on 62 million taxpayers. That's 310 million, not 250 million, but it's irrelevant. The direct federal debt was 20 trillion dollars ~5 years ago, and more like 150 trillion in unfunded obligations. Let's count that in relative zeroes.

310,000,000
Vs.
20,000,000,000,000.

Do you see the problem?

Let me put it for you another way. At a rate of 310,000,000 per year, it would take a mere 64,516 years to pay that debt off. Count the unfunded obligations, rather than just the direct cash debt of 5 years ago (and it's much bigger now), and you've got ~7.5 times that, or 450,000 years to pay off the debt.

So, let's get to a more practical timescale for paying off the debt. Say 64 years. To do that, we'd need to jack up your 5 dollar payment by 1000x, or 5000 dollars.

Which is a third of my annual income.

You really think that isn't going to have a deleterious effect on the economy?

Let's multiply that by 7.5 times, to represent the actual full debt, not just the immediately-visible debt, and that becomes 37,500 dollars. So, I roughly need to increase my income by 2.5 times now just to pay the tax burden.


So no. Raising taxes will not solve the problem, and in point of fact it will not even contribute to solving the problem. It will only and can only make things worse as it cuts into economic growth, which is the only way we even have a chance at getting out of this debt hole.

As to those of you who think that there will be no meaningful effects of continuing to run up debt like this, it will, and the absolute minimum reason for this is that it will eventually cause runaway hyperinflation, but I'll address that in a different post.

Regardless, the fact remains that rich people use a variety of methods to avoid paying taxes, such as incorporating or moving their money out of the county; this is why the establishment was so desperate to get at Trump's tax records, because they assumed he wasn't paying what he was supposed to pay, just like the majority of the upper echelons of society.

Spoiler: How the Super Rich Avoid Paying Taxes Infographic

Now, how this all relates to the data contained within that video you had me watch, I don't know. Perhaps closing these loopholes wouldn't change the effective tax revenue one iota; I still think it's important that we close them though, if only from a perspective of fairness. These people are gaming the system using methods the rest of us can't use, because we don't have enough money to take advantage of them; that's not fair.

 

[Bacle]

Regardless, the fact remains that rich people use a variety of methods to avoid paying taxes, such as incorporating or moving their money out of the county; this is why the establishment was so desperate to get at Trump's tax records, because they assumed he wasn't paying what he was supposed to pay, just like the majority of the upper echelons of society.

Spoiler: How the Super Rich Avoid Paying Taxes Infographic

Now, how this all relates to the data contained within that video you had me watch, I don't know. Perhaps closing these loopholes wouldn't change the effective tax revenue one iota; I still think it's important that we close them though, if only from a perspective of fairness. These people are gaming the system using methods the rest of us can't use, because we don't have enough money to take advantage of them; that's not fair.

No, we don't need to 'close' these avenues; that would never be allowed to happen by the elite and would actually be counterproductive. These people are not 'short changing' the US, because they are following the tax law as written, and making the rather normal choice of not having to pay more on taxes than they legally have to.

What we need are for the common man and woman on the street to be able to access the information and services the rich use to utilize these avenues. Simplifying the tax code so that it doesn't take a tax lawyer to deal with it would be a great step in that direction.