[ryan_lane]

> Conservatives want to cut taxes to force liberals to cut spending. Liberals want to increase spending to force the conservatives to increase taxes.

This is straight propaganda. Both parties increase spending. One party cuts taxes for the rich, the other increases taxes on the rich.

Conservatives haven't been "small government" and haven't cut taxes for folks other than the rich in a long, long time. Even calling them "small government" is a misnomer, because that propaganda is about privatization, not reducing costs (private services are less efficient and more costly than the government service they replace!)

Let's stop calling the problem "both-sides". One side is considerably worse for the economy, and you and I know it's the conservatives.

[anon291]

A 'cost' paid for by a private service directly translates into prices and salaries. Whereas a government wealth transfer program appears as taxation and handouts. Everyone likes the former. No one likes the latter. Why this is still confusing in 2025 is beyond me

[ryan_lane]

This is why I say it's propaganda.

The same underlying service is being done. It hasn't been cut. It's been shifted from a government service, to a private industry. The government pays roughly the same amount they were previously paying (or in a lot of cases slightly more, with the promise of paying less in the future), the private company provides the service as cheaply as they can, and takes a cut of the cost for profit, benefiting a small number of people, while providing a worse service level for tax payers.

This isn't a capitalism vs socialism thing. My issue with it is that privatization is blatant corruption sold as "capitalism". There's no capitalism here, because there's no competition, outside of the bidding on the contract. Competing on who can provide the cheapest service doesn't improve the service; in fact, it reduces the service quality to maximize profit. Reducing service quality to maximize profit would be fine, from a capitalism point of view, if others were offering the same service to the customer.

[anon291]

It really depends on the industry, but 'bidding for a contract' does not entail a lack of competition. Yes, for certain industries, like utilities, there is no competition based on the way things are set up (and really based on the foreseeable way in which things could be set up). For things such as requisitions of commodity items, then competition is not only possible but preferable. So I disagree with your blanket characterization of things. People really need to have more nuance when discussing these things. Privatizing railroads is different than privatizing food processing.

[ryan_lane]

I'm saying it's not competitive because they're not competing to provide a better service, they're competing to provide the same service at a lower cost, but the quality of the service is effectively always worse than the original government provided service. That isn't capitalism.

Capitalism would be to provide multiple options to the users of the service, and have the providers compete against each other in a proper market.

I used to work for the government (Naval Oceanographic Office), and I worked with the contracting agencies on areas that had been privatized and it was a nightmare. Every few years you'd have multiple companies bid to run the service, but for the most part the same contractor would win the bid because they wrote the software in such a way that only they could run. It had relatively no documentation, had piss poor processes wrapping it, and the subject matter experts worked for the contracting agency. When the contract did change, everything would grind to a halt. For sure, that was more expensive than the original government provided service, but once something is privatized, it can never go back.

I agree we need to have more nuance here. You for some reason think I'm suggesting that "things such as requisitions of commodity items" shouldn't be private, which is not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying that existing government provided services, like the post office, for example, are run cheaper and more effectively by the government, and turning services like these private is for the sake of corruption.

[marcusverus]

> Conservatives... haven't cut taxes for folks other than the rich in a long, long time.

This is a lie:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/business/economy/income-t...

> private services are less efficient and more costly than the government service they replace!

Yes, this is why capitalism famously collapsed in the 90s, and all of the formerly capitalist countries socialized their economies!

[stahtops]

> The tax savings were relatively small for many families, however. The middle fifth of earners got about a $780 tax cut last year on average, according to the Tax Policy Center.

> The top 20 percent of earners received more than 60 percent of the total tax savings, according to the Tax Policy Center; the top 1 percent received nearly 17 percent of the total benefit, and got an average tax cut of more than $30,000. And that’s not even factoring in the law’s huge cut to corporate taxes, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy households that own the most stock.

Don’t be part of the problem Marcus. The reality is cutting taxes for the poor by $2/day, for the rich by $80/day, and telling everyone they got a tax break with a straight face… while you simultaneously cut services, issue policies that cause inflation, and levy taxes domestically on the poor through tariffs is the republican way!

[marcusverus]

This makes me laugh.

> The tax savings were relatively small for many families, however. The middle fifth of earners got about a $780 tax cut last year on average, according to the Tax Policy Center.

If you take someone who pays a small amount of taxes (the middle fifth paid $2170 in taxes in 2017), and give them a big tax cut ($780 in savings would mean they got a ~30% cut), the number is still small. Pretending that this is insignificant is just goofy.

> The top 20 percent of earners received more than 60 percent of the total tax savings.

People who pay the most taxes get the most out of tax cuts? Scandalous! Income taxes paid by quintile:

Lowest: $-476

Fourth: $-677

Third: $2170

Second: $6952

First : $31,132

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUFEDTAXESLB0102M

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUFEDTAXESLB0103M

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUFEDTAXESLB0104M

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUFEDTAXESLB0105M

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUFEDTAXESLB0106M

[ryan_lane]

Lowest and fourth got a tax increase. Middle class got a minor tax cut, the middle-upper class got a decent cut, and the upper class got a large cut.

It's also worth noting that the cut in question also had temporary provisions that expired, causing a tax increase for nearly all brackets except the upper class.

There has also been a massive cut in social services, which primarily affect the lowest/fourth brackets, which means they're paying more taxes for fewer services.

It's hard to interpret that "tax cut" in a way that doesn't scream "we're increasing taxes on most, and cutting services, to give the wealthy a tax cut".

[stahtops]

It’s your link buddy, just quoting your own source.

$780 is insignificant.

Tax policy is written by humans, and they can do what they like with it. If you want to cut taxes for the poor, you do. If you want to cut taxes for the ultra wealthy, but make sure the statistics say poor people got a tax cut, you can do that too.

If you paid 1M in taxes, a 30% cut is 300k, and if you paid 1k it’s $300. One person will buy some bitcoin or a Porsche, the other will be lucky to buy some gas and groceries.

Both got a 30% tax cut, but it would be goofy to claim they have equivalent value.

If you wanted to be an honest person, maybe you correct the poster that there were tax cuts for the poor, but also point out that the cuts heavily favored the wealthy. Which by the way, was their argument.

[marcusverus]

> $780 is insignificant.

Yeah, just stating your opinion isn't an argument.

> Tax policy is written by humans, and they can do what they like with it.

Insightful!

> If you want to cut taxes for the poor, you do.

What taxes? The poor pay negative income taxes. Did you read the post you're responding to?

> If you want to cut taxes for the ultra wealthy, but make sure the statistics say poor people got a tax cut, you can do that too.

I would love for the poor to pay zero taxes. It would be an improvement over the amount they "pay" now!

> If you paid 1M in taxes, a 30% cut is 300k, and if you paid 1k it’s $300. One person will buy some bitcoin or a Porsche, the other will be lucky to buy some gas and groceries.

Okay.

> If you wanted to be an honest person

You don't have to seethe, you know. You can be wrong without letting everyone know that you're miserable and angry about an internet post.

> ... maybe you correct the poster that there were tax cuts for the poor, but also point out that the cuts heavily favored the wealthy. Which by the way, was their argument.

You're almost caught up! Now that argument was I making in response? If you tried to understand instead of trying to misunderstand (or worse, just vomiting angry words without any substance to them), you might learn something!

[AlexeyBelov]

As an outside observer: it's your comment that seems seething and out of place on HN, not theirs.

[stahtops]

The USA has no negative income tax. There are programs like the EITC which provide benefits to the poor and can be larger than their tax burden depending on the specific circumstances.

The EITC was initially signed into law by Ford (R) and expanded by Reagan (R). Regan apparently called it "the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress".

I'm sure you knew all this, so thanks for being honest in this post about the fact that you would like to dismantle this particular social safety net.

Seething comment sounds like projection btw, I'm not mad. The whole point of HN is to have the discussion expand in detail. Seems like it's working:

- Someone generalized - You called them a liar - We found out the generalization wasn't strictly correct, but basically true in spirit: the wealthy received the majority of the benefit, the poor got a small token for the sake of statistics / sound bytes.