[slg]

I feel like the well has been poisoned regarding national debt talk. There is simply no point in having a conversation about the debt without discussing how revenue should be raised and/or expenses lowered. That means someone focusing purely on the debt being bad is likely doing it because they know their specific proposals for addressing it won't be popular.

[someguydave]

Raising taxes is really not part of the solution because increasing tax rate rates will likely not yield more tax collection. The real problem is immense spending on seniors to live a free life

[M95D]

I'm not from US. How is federal gov. spending on seniors? AFAIK, there are no state pensions. Or am I wrong?

[someguydave]

Unfortunately you are wrong. While people don't "own" a pension, they do get government payments for life after they hit age 65 as long as they (very minimal) work to earn an income during their working years. (This is social security). They also get free healthcare for life at 65 and if they are unable to pay for full time round-the clock hospital care they get that free too (Medicaid).

All-in the US governments spends $2,700 billion per year on seniors which is nearly triple the defense spending.

[slg]

>increasing tax rate rates will likely not yield more tax collection

What's so special about our current tax rates that you're making this claim? Because if you believe that higher tax rates don't yield more tax collected, why not argue for tax rates to approach 0%? So either you're couching your real and unpopular opinion like I described in my first comment or you're claiming that our tax rates are optimized for tax collected.

[drcongo]

"popular" is why this mess has happened.

[slg]

Should we just do away with democracy?

[SirFatty]

yes, and we can't tax our way out of this situation.