From my understanding of USA as a foreigner, tax dollars are for corporate bailouts and military.

strictnein 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is the understanding that you've been presented with, likely by people looking to mislead you, but that's not at all what our actual budget reflects. The social safety nets that we supposedly don't have take up around 2/3rds of our federal budget.

	▲	Loughla 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's like 50% if you also count the stuff I pay for that is a direct benefit to me at retirement (as does anyone who pays into social security). So it might be a little nitpicky, and your point still stands. A lot of money is spent on defense and business, but not as much as the before portrays. Where businesses benefit is in not paying the tax, instead of receiving payments. That's definitely a problem, but it's a different thing.

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petcat 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As an American, tax dollars are for re-paving the parking lot at our middle school, establishing a water district for our town, buying another school bus, and funding our municipal fire department and ambulance corp.

Any money collected by the feds is whatever. Hopefully it goes toward NASA putting another robot on Mars.

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tehjoker an hour ago | parent [-]

This is kind of a strange take.

Local taxes are for petty but useful stuff because the sovereignty of your locality is heavily circumscribed by state and national authorities. That means the real budgetary decisions made about the future of the nation, anything interesting, anything made with some level of self-determination, is made at the national level. Unfortunately, in the USA, budgetary discretion is used for war and rhetorically defended by all politicians while the non-discretionary spending on e.g. social security, is constantly attacked.

	▲	petcat an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This is kind of a strange take. > Local taxes are for petty but useful stuff My state has completely state-funded healthcare, and a renowned state-funded university system. USA is a nation of states and those states (mostly) make their own way. I live in one of the good ones.

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WalterBright 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

66% of Federal spending is on entitlements.

	▲	triceratops 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Social Security and Medicare have a separate, capped tax though. They're funded through that tax. Federal tax is effectively uncapped. Where does it go?