Eventually the interest payments crowd out most other government spending, or require significant across the board tax increases to maintain current levels of spend.
The US is currently at $1T+ a year in tax revenues that instantly go right out the door toward paying bond interest. It will likely be $2T within 10 years, even fewer if rates don't come down in that time. It's compounding and therefore exponential.
Situations like Japan are even more dire. A small increase in the interest rate results in a HUGE increase in interest expense at 260% debt to GDP ratios. Worse, their population is naturally shrinking a million people a year on account of their decades-long birth rate implosion. Hard to outgrow that.
So lets raise taxes now and pay it off. Who should we tax? Should we squeeze blood from stones and try to get the poor to pay more taxes, or should we tax the wealthy?
Who am I kidding. The current administration showed us--what was it? last week?--that they prefer cutting taxes for the wealthy and increasing the deficit.
Republicans ALWAYS increase the deficit. Democrats usually do, but not always.
It looks like we'll probably let the generation that created this mess retire like normal, and instead try to fix it by making their children and grandchildren work until death.
You can’t tax the rich enough to pay off the debt. They already pay the overwhelming majority of taxes.
One company alone— Berkshire Hathaway— paid almost $27 Billion in taxes for 2024. That’s about 5% of all corporate taxes paid.
To really make money, you have to tax a bunch of smaller fish, not a handful of bigger fish. You need big numbers.
That’s politically unpalatable, especially for Republicans. ( Though Democrats seem to have no appetite for it either. )
In the past, Republicans would cut taxes ( popular ) while not spending as much ( unpopular ). Democrats would not cut taxes ( unpopular ) while spending more ( popular ).
Sadly, today both parties are acting like undisciplined parents. Everybody wants to give out the treats ( spend big ) while nobody wants to earn the paycheck ( raise the taxes ). It’s a bipartisan formula for disaster.
> You can’t tax the rich enough to pay off the debt. They already pay the overwhelming majority of taxes.
Yes. This means that if we double the taxes on the wealthy we will roughly double our total taxes collected. A neat trick.
It's true that the top 50% pay 97% of taxes, but that's not the slam dunk you think it is, because the top 50% have 97.5% of the wealth (see sources).
Your suggestion to tax the poor is stupid, because the poor have nothing more to give. Even if we could extract 10x the amount of taxes from the poor, it would barely be a blip. If the bottom 50% paid 10x the taxes, then they'd be contributing, what, like 15% of all taxes? We're going to take from the poor, take food out of their mouths, for 15% more taxes? Like I said before, its like trying to squeeze blood from a stone, there's just nothing there to squeeze.
>Yes. This means that if we double the taxes on the wealthy we will roughly double our total taxes collected. A neat trick.
no, you won't, people change their financial decisions in the face of taxes. increasing taxes will slow the economy, bringing in a change of party in the whitehouse and congress, and taxes will be lowered again. high taxes don't work, and people don't like them.
>It's true that the top 50% pay 97% of taxes, but that's not the slam dunk you think it is, because the top 50% have 97.5% of the wealth (see sources).
taxes are on income, not wealth. the reason those percentage numbers and the wealth numbers come out the same is because poor people pay small or zero tax so it's as if their income is not counted
higher taxes on the wealthy will not benefit the poor, their taxes don't get lowered. However slowing the economy does hurt the poor
Instead of taxing income or spending, tax wealth. Will the wealthy make themselves less wealthy in order to avoid a wealth tax? I don't think so. Tax the top 1%; even with a wealth tax they'll still be able to afford multiple homes and a yacht--hell, there are people who can afford two homes and a yacht and don't even fall in the top 1%, so people will still be able to have plenty without ever actually paying a wealth tax.
It will probably have to look something like western Europe with massive across the board tax increases. I make $60k a year in the USA and my tax rates are about 12%, with no VAT. They'd probably need to look more like France, where a $60k income is hit with a 42% effective tax (adjusted for progressive rates) before 20% VAT is paid at the store.
vat is simply corporate income tax, it's a tax on "value added", i.e. profit or income. I don't know in europe whether that is on top of other corporate income tax or not.
Companies can just raise prices without consequences? Is that free market competition in action?
Snark aside. I've always heard the idea was that free markets and competition would drive down prices, and that if a company was to just raise their prices, they would actually lose money because people would buy from a competitor with better prices. Turns out companies can just raise prices though. What does it mean when the things that happen in a healthy free market aren't happening?
The BBB increased the QSBS exclusion and gross asset value limit by 50% and quadrupled the SALT deduction, among other things. I guess you could argue the meaning of "for the wealthy" here, but it would be hard to do in good faith.
QSBS is capped, and the SALT deduction goes away with increasing MAGI. They're targeted at the upper middle class, not the wealthy.
The "S" in QSBS stands for "Small" business.
The previous limits were fixed, and this change seems to be adjusting it for inflation. It's been around since 1993. An inflation adjustment is not a "cut".
Even so, as I'm sure you're aware, these two items are not what people mean by "tax cuts for the wealthy". If you ask anyone (other than a tax accountant) what a QSBS deduction is, you'll get a blank stare.
QSBS is only capped for sweat equity. My Series A lead gets a $200m exclusion. With the new $75m asset limit, the Series B lead will probably triple that.
Things like QSBS and carried interest are absolutely part of what people mean by "tax cuts for the wealthy".
The US is currently at $1T+ a year in tax revenues that instantly go right out the door toward paying bond interest. It will likely be $2T within 10 years, even fewer if rates don't come down in that time. It's compounding and therefore exponential.
Situations like Japan are even more dire. A small increase in the interest rate results in a HUGE increase in interest expense at 260% debt to GDP ratios. Worse, their population is naturally shrinking a million people a year on account of their decades-long birth rate implosion. Hard to outgrow that.