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| ▲ | rayiner 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Our budget deficit is $2 trillion. To close it, you need to significantly raise taxes on the fattest part of the income curve, which is the top 25%. They have $10 trillion of income. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in.... An across the board 200 basis point increase would close the deficit. That would raise their taxes to 38% at the low end to 46% at the high end, which is perfectly fine. The problem is that the top 25% isn’t an “out group” in either coalition. You have Facebook PMs who vote blue and guys who own a small plumbing company who vote red both making $1 million+ annually and neither wanting their own taxes to go up. Then there are the guys below them looking up. Over 10% of the country will be in the top 1% of earners at some point in their life. So the guys pulling in a few hundred K as a senior engineer or construction manager don’t want their taxes to go up either. |
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| ▲ | what 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > taking half of someone’s money is totally fine Okay. Then let’s also reduce what’s spent welfare/benefits by a similar amount, at least we’re not taking money they worked for. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | No, U.S. benefits are at a typical level for an OECD country. The problem is the taxes. U.S. taxation is only 25% of GDP, versus 40% in western Europe. We could raise taxes $3 trillion annually and still be at the level of one of the more responsible European countries like the U.K. |
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| ▲ | apparent 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Disagree. We have a spending problem, not a tax revenue problem. No matter how much the govt brings in, it will want to spend an increasing amount more. |
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| ▲ | ifyoubuildit 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Is there anything that can't be solved by bigger government? |
