[Sysreq2]

I keep harping on this - but two points:

1) Our debt is above GDP and interest is rising faster than GDP growth. Debt is fine when being used as leverage but we are upside down at the moment.

2) We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment. The government has no money. They are using employee pension funds to meet obligations with a promissory note. We have negative cash flow and have run out of the ability to extend our line of credit until Congress raises the debt ceiling.

[xphos]

I feel funny to say it, but I think we have an income problem, not an expense problem. Republicans just spend money and then cut taxes.

If people believe we need what we are spending on, we need to tax the difference. It sucks to pay taxes but we need to do it

[janandonly]

I read about a guy in Turkmenistan who would as a punishment be taxed 20%, and I thought, living in Western Europe or North America is kind of a financial punishment .

Mind you, taxed 20%, not 20% extra. Source: https://www.jw.org/en/news/region/turkmenistan/Turkmenistan-...

[ThunderSizzle]

How much tax is enough? The government would, without playing a deduction game, would love to take 20-30% of my income, while having devalued my dollar by 50-100% in the last 5 years. My salary goes half as far.

Being honest, on what should be a great local salary, we can't even afford a starter home, or savings after our monthly grocery bill. The government caused this inflationary Era to devalue the debt, and your suggestion is to take more from families already struggling to stay ahead?

Such a communist. Take from the people at gunpoint, give it to the DC bureuacrats.

[Tadpole9181]

It's telling that you didn't even consider that the taxes would come from businesses. The businesses that created the majority of inflation by gouging consumers out and bleeding them dry every tiniest opportunity they legally could.

[xphos]

I mean practically this take is so wrong. If the (US) government is just so hell bent on taxation how the heck did we get to the point where taxes on income went from 90% (~1950) on top bracket to less than 35%? Business tax was (35% 2008) -> 20% (2020).

Empirically in the US in the last 70 years this just never has played out this why. The government did not cause and rarely causes major inflation either at least in this time period. Usually its the economy explodes due to a private industry bubble exploding or natural resources crunch due to foreign governments reducing oil production or pandemics.

Its pretty childish to use communist as a tag line when I qualified the claim you can believe that benefits should not exist but if you do you have to own saying you want to cut benefits for poor people and give a tax break to rich people (at least that is what happens when you cut taxes in a progressive system)

[crabmusket]

> We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment. The government has no money.

All spending is authorised by Congress, isn't it? So how is the debt ceiling any different? No federal programs "have money" short of Congress deciding it.

[Sysreq2]

Right but until Congress raises the debt ceiling, the Executive Branch has an empty wallet and maxed out credit card. Funding doesn’t go out all at once either. Some programs don’t start until later in the year for example. They typically aim to distribute 1/12th of the yearly allowance per month. Sometimes agencies will over spend early and have to be austere later (like FEMA last year).

Appropriations is Congressional and specifics how much an agency will get over the fiscal year.

Apportionment is under the Executive and addresses when and how those funds are made available.

They are two distinct things.

[skywhopper]

None of that has anything whatsoever to do with what DOGE is doing.

[skywhopper]

The debt ceiling is entirely artificial, and ought to be unconstitutional. Congress decides how much to spend. Issuing debt when necessary to pay for those allocations is implied.

Everyone is missing the most obvious way to raise revenue: raise taxes.

[insane_dreamer]

The military is over half of all Fed discretionary spending.

Another huge expense is servicing our debt.

Those are what we should be addressing, not cutting NIH research.

By the way, we do have the ability to issue more debt -- because thankfully our debt is USD denominated and we can simply print more dollars. It's the only way we've survived this long as the world's largest debtor nation.

[guax]

I went to search, the us gov has a nice website about the dev. Til.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio...

The debt graph caught my eye. I did not expect it to be that stable for so long. I wonder what happened in 1981, impossible to say.

[refurb]

> I wonder what happened in 1981, impossible to say.

Total federal income was flat after the early 80's recession, then grew by 60%+ over the next decade, despite the Reagan tax cuts, increasing $400B.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFR

Federal spending continued to grow.

That's what happened.

[JumpCrisscross]

> We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment

One, DOGE isn't doing anything to cut spending. Every dollar Musk "cuts" that doesn't get Congressional authorisation is just being borrowed from future litigation plus all the time and expense that will eat up.

Two, if DOGE can supercede the Congress than so can the Treasury in issuing new debt. Trump has said he wants to kill the debt limit. He could just try that with an executive order. DOGE is already shredding contracts and blocking lawful payments--we're already jeopardising the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. (Ironically, in a manner similar to how South Africa trashed itself in modern history.)

[ankwardat]

Musk is stealing data to use for his own gain, and installing back doors so he permanently has control over government. It will take decades to undo the spyware he's installing.

[cr__]

So raise the debt ceiling?

[ankwardat]

These are the biggest contributors to undoing Clinton's balanced budget in the 90's:

* Bush Jr Tax Cuts

* Useless Iraq war

* Too Big to Fail Bailouts of Banks

* Trumps tax cuts

* COVID spending

When billionaires and trillion-dollar corporations pay episilon to zero in taxes, maybe they should pay their share. Taxing the rich would solve the problem overnight.