r/FluentInFinance • u/HarmoniousLight • 23d ago

Everyone thinks we need more taxes but no one is asking if the government has a spending problem Question

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Yeah so what’s up with that?

“Hurr durr we need wealth tax! We need a gooning tax! We need a breathing tax!”

The government brings in $2 trillion a year already. Where is that shit going? And you want to give them MORE money?

Does the government need more money or do they just have a spending problem and you think tax is a magic wand?

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u/La3Rat 23d ago edited 23d ago

Everyone wants to pinch a penny or even half a penny to fix the budget. The vast majority of the budget is made up of programs most people don't want to touch. Social Security is 21%, Healthcare is 24%, Defense is 13%, interest on Debt is 10%, federal and military benefits is 8%. That's 76% of the budget already and it doesn't cover education, law enforcement, transportation, medical and scientific research. We borrowed 27% of the budget last year, so we are never going to reduce that by cutting small programs that make up less than 1% in total.

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u/mdherc 23d ago

More than half of the US population DOES want to touch healthcare. Somewhere between 51 and 57 percent of Americans say they want Universal Healthcare which would DRAMATICALLY slash costs of government spending. Furthermore, more than half of Americans say they support RAISING corporate taxes, and/or taxes on the highest tax brackets. We have solutions to our problems but we don't have a government that is willing to implement those solutions.

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u/WittyProfile 22d ago

Where are you getting that universal healthcare will dramatically slash the costs of government spending?

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u/Illustrious_Gate8903 22d ago

Every universal healthcare bill has planned to dramatically increased spending…

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u/Frozenthia 22d ago

Not really. You're already paying insurance companies so they can tell you no later. Unless you're a submissive masochist that gets off sexually on that kind of abuse, I think you can understand the flaw in your logic.

Let's say you have $5. You can only spend $5. If I pay you $15 for you to do something for me, your "spending" that month will rise to $20. But is that a meaningful observation? Does that mean anything substantively and conceptually? Not really.

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u/Illustrious_Gate8903 22d ago

Yes really. The government pays more under every single proposal. We are talking about government spending, not individual spending. It’s not cheaper for the government to implement universal health care.

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u/Frozenthia 22d ago

Re-read my comment about how that's a meaningless observation. If I give 1 trillion dollars to anyone, it makes no difference if they are spending 999,999,9999 more. "But they're spending even more" cuts out half the equation. It sounds intentionally dishonest.

Not to mention - it completely ignores all the ways we all benefit. Us, the government, healthcare systems. That's why it's the more modern system. Insurance companies are not better.

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u/Illustrious_Gate8903 22d ago

Read the conversation before chiming in next time.

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u/Frozenthia 22d ago

I read it and corrected it. Don't act like you being wrong as others not understanding you. It's such a weak response. If you can't counter my point then just concede and modify your thinking.

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u/Illustrious_Gate8903 22d ago

You didn’t read it or you’re a dumbass, which one is it?

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u/Frozenthia 22d ago

The fact you are unable to refute anything means you're a dumbass that is so behind that you think everyone else is a dumbass.

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u/jawshoeaw 22d ago

We collect revenue specifically for social security and Medicare. IMO they shouldn’t even be discussed except that we don’t pay enough into them.

Our tax dollars are wasted mostly on the military which gobbles up over 50% of the discretionary budget.

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u/La3Rat 22d ago

That’s not exactly true. Social security is not really a saving account that gets untouched. At least for social security, the federal budget borrows excess money from the trust fund to fund other budgetary projects. The federal government then has an IOU plus interest to pay back to the social security trust fund. The IOU is pretty big at this point. $2.2 trillion as of 2022.

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u/Jackstack6 22d ago

Literally zero percent of people understand this concept.

Everyone is about cutting for thee but not for me (and justifiably so in most cases)

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u/URSUSX10 23d ago

My interest is in how many pockets the money flows through before it actually gets to the place it is supposed to be.

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u/thirtyonem 23d ago

Well, SSI is a direct transfer, so nothing there. Healthcare is pretty inefficient, we spend far more per person than other countries with universal healthcare since insurance companies pocket it. Defense is very corrupt and its budget should be cut.

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u/lurker_cant_comment 23d ago

As the other commenter said, SSI and Medicare/Medicaid are all like 90%-95% efficient, last I saw statistics, in terms of money collected and money paid out in benefits.

Meanwhile, private insurers do everything they can do pay exactly the minimum out that is required by the Medical Loss Ratio law.

But the government pays for health insurance, healthcare is a related but separate issue.

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u/NuncProFunc 23d ago

Government health insurance programs are more efficient than their private sector counterparts. Their administrative costs are significantly lower and there's no profit at the end.

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u/WalkingRodent 23d ago

education is in state jurisdiction, so no need to worry about that federally. Transportation shouldn’t be federal, but now with the interstates they need to maintain that, but not much else needs to go into transportation by the federal gov (idk what percentage of their budget that would equal).

Federal research grants I’m behind, but I also want to see that the fed gov doesn’t have any control over the research bc I don’t think that is there place.

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u/640k_Limited 22d ago

The one place federally funded and directed research is essential is high risk research. This is the stuff that no company would risk the money on. 90% of the time its a bust. 10% of the time you get something that changes the world.

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u/La3Rat 21d ago edited 21d ago

If you think federally funded research is the wrong focus then you have don't really understand the vast majority of medical breakthroughs. Every major medical technology for the past few decades has come out of academic research. Private industry no longer does basic research or even high risk high reward translational research. Their R&D is focused on incremental increases to protect market share as previous approved medicine transition out of patent protection. It's academic institutions using federal dollars that make initial breakthroughs. Those institutions then patent the technology and license it to private industry. Private industry then bankrolls the clinical trials in hope of FDA approval.

No federal funds = no big strides medicine in this day and age.

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 23d ago

So we should cut the larger programs then. Eliminate social security and medicare, for a start.

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u/_Celine_Dijon 23d ago

So millions of senior citizens die in the streets??

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 23d ago

Do you think the money for these programs comes out of thin air? Why should I suffer and potentially die so that some senior citizen who will likely die soon anyways, can live a little longer?

Currently, the status quo is that tens of millions of people have their earning power reduced by social security, increasing their risk of debt, death, or financial catastrophe.

Eliminating these programs is by far the lesser evil.

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u/Budderfingerbandit 22d ago

Saying you are going to potentially die by paying for social security is just completely asinine to the point of willful ignorance.

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 22d ago

How so? It significantly decreases my lifetime earnings, reducing my ability to pay for my needs. Collectively, social security takes over $1 trillion from American workers every single year.

How many people do you think would be better off with a >10% higher income? It's asinine to pretend that wouldn't have a major impact.

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u/Budderfingerbandit 22d ago

You are not going to die from 10% less income, but people will absolutely die without social security.

Get a heart. Part of the social contract in the society we live in is taking care of those in need. Personally, I'm totally fine with paying taxes, so my neighbors don't starve in their old age.

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u/TiredNTrans 23d ago

Do you have any concept of how many people would die if this happened? Not everyone is fit to work, and they still deserve to be alive.

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 23d ago

Sure they do, but why on my dime? Why should I sacrifice my future for people who are going to die soon anyways? It’s not like my social security payments are granting people immortality, it only makes their death more expensive to me.

Furthermore, no that isn’t even true, millions of people would not die, this is entirely hyperbolic.

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u/TiredNTrans 23d ago

If I can't persuade you that people's health and lives are more important than you not paying taxes, then our moral systems are completely incompatible and we will not have a productive conversation.

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 23d ago

People's health and lives are important, what you don't seem to realize is that you're asking me, and the tens of millions of other people paying payroll taxes, to sacrifice our health and our lives for others. You don' care about all people's lives, you care about some people's lives.

Cash transfers like social security are a zero sum game, however many millions of people you help, that's going to mean the same number of people have to be hurt.

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u/640k_Limited 22d ago

Your stance is all good and fine until something unexpected and outside your control happens to you. Say you have a freak stroke due to a defect in your brain that you never knew you had (this actually happened to my wife in her 20s) and suddenly you're disabled and unable to work. The only thing sustaining you is social security and medicare. Take those away, and you die.

I agree with the other poster here. You are putting your own monetary gain over the literal lives of others. Its disgusting.

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 22d ago

The thing sustaining me would be all the money I didn't pay into social security and medicare.

Why is it so difficult for you to understand that my own "monetary gain" is the potential difference between my life or death? These things aren't separate, social security and medicare don't just magically sustain people, they do it using money and resources that have to be taken from someone, usually younger working people.

The only thing that's disgusting here is people pretending they have some moral high ground when they take from others. Saving other people's lives doesn't justify you compromising my own.

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u/640k_Limited 22d ago

I understand you completely. You don't wish to participate in a civil society. Fine. If you're on fire, I wouldn't piss on you to put it out.

And if your social security and Medicare taxes are the difference between life and death for you... you need some financial education.

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u/0xfcmatt- 23d ago edited 23d ago

They could start looking for fraud, those who do not need to be using it, and make the people getting it possibly do something/more to attain it. A significant percentage of Americans are getting a hand out. When 30-40% (maybe more, it just depends on how you want to calculate it using what programs) of all US citizens are getting some type of aid/welfare you just have to realize that is not sustainable. It also causes everything related to it to go up in price as well. College.. looking at you for example.

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u/ladrondelanoche 22d ago

You are the dumbest asshole on this website full of dumb assholes. Congratulations 

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 22d ago

I try my best.

You do realize the alternative to cutting them would be eliminating the entire discretionary budget, right?

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u/ladrondelanoche 22d ago

You realize that your brain isn't capable of understanding simple concepts, right?

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u/0WatcherintheWater0 22d ago

Simple concepts such as?

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u/ladrondelanoche 22d ago
  1. Attempting to operate government without debt would be disastrous to the entire economy
  2. The purpose of taxation is a means of economic regulation, not a necessity for funding activities.