Actually, you’re completely wrong. That thought did not occur to me, and it is not an argument I like (except when we are literally talking about rounding errors, like a $10 million grant to study some scientific phenomenon that anti-government spending crusaders rail against while not understanding at all).
I said it’s pretty cold to generally like cuts to a program to make sure poor people can buy groceries while hailing that you just got a tax cut that amounts to maybe several weeks of take-home pay for those same poor people.
The reason you can’t win with our side is that this kind of crap is disgusting. It’s like Wall Street bankers spitting on homeless people for kicks.
More like helpless people being robbed and then forced to pay admission to a show where the robber berates them for being so stupid that they got robbed.
And that the money that was stolen probably would have been wasted on things like a birthday cake for their kid (what kid NEEDS a cake?) instead of the cool stuff rich people will buy, like a Performance Dual Motor Tesla Model 3. The seats are white vegan leather!
[the capitalist] turns the worker into a being with neither needs nor senses and turn the worker’s activity into a pure abstraction from all activity. Hence any luxury that the worker might enjoy is reprehensible, and anything that goes beyond the most abstract need – either in the form of passive enjoyment or active expression – appears to him as a luxury. – Karl Marx
Perhaps you’ve misunderstood. Whether I pay $9,000 or $11,500 in taxes this year, and next year, and for the next 8 or 9 years, has a real, direct impact on my bottom line. Whether we’re in debt $32 trillion in 10 years or only $30.1 trillion has a drastically-less direct impact on my bottom line. Do you understand now?
all numbers in this post are approximations, offered only as an example
It makes a big difference if we matching tax cuts with spending cuts. If we keep spending the same amount of money and just borrow to make up for the tax cuts, then the debt grows.
What do you think will happen to that debt? Will it just disappear? No, it will have to be paid off - with taxes.
So what’s the point of getting ten thousand dollars this year if it just means you have to pay fifteen thousand dollars when the debt is due? You’ll just come out five thousand dollars behind.
Let’s say the government builds a bridge. Which would you prefer them to do to pay for it; pay a million dollars for it or borrow a million dollars and then pay the million with two hundred thousand dollars of interest? Same bridge but you can pay either $1,000,000 or $1,200,000 for it. Remember it’s coming out of your taxes either way.
Can you explain why you think going into debt won’t have an impact on your bottom line? Do you find that works when you buy a car or a house? That going into debt has no effect on your finances? Because that’s not how it works for most people.
Not that I agree, but if someone’s position was “So what about the debt? I get more money now and for the foreseeable future. Why should I care about the debt?” what’s the answer to that?
I think there’s pretty substantial evidence that it does not, in fact “have to be paid off” or that “when the debt is due” exists in any meaningful timeframe. If we had a BBA or something like that, you could plausible make these claims, but we do not.
I didn’t claim it “won’t have an impact” on my bottom line. It may, but my claim is that that impact is likely smaller and more distant than the direct impact of saving $2,500/year for the next 10 years.
I understand the arguments of why debt is bad and we shouldn’t go into debt. I’ve made those arguments before. Nobody gives a shit. We’re over $20T in debt and on our way to $30T. Do you reasonably believe that there’s some point in your or my lifetime where we will have paid that amount off with taxes?
The son of the Debt Clock billionaire saystax the rich:
But to some people, it may seem an abstraction. It is the government that owes the whole $16 trillion; averaging it out ‘per family’ is just a statistical game.
Until it isn’t. Even** HD**'s own cite about that silly penny plan acknowledges that interest on the debt is on the road to $1 trillion per year. Now, maybe Juan doesn’t like military spending but Jane doesn’t like Medicare spending, Joe is against food stamps, and Jim wants to cut it all. Well, even with programs a person doesn’t like, funding them at least produces some public good (or product anyway, we hope it is good). Interest on the debt is nothing but the public supporting the lavish fortunes of mostly super wealthy bondholders. The public gets basically jack in that case.
Some people take an attitude that “the government can’t do anything right.” They view any government action at all (until they’re flooded or a crime victim or something) as harmful, and so they may think “the bond guys get richer and the government doesn’t do any further harm” is the preferable outcome.
Me, I think The Government Can’t Do Anything Right is one of those TV bromides that get push-marketed so hard, kind of like Washington Will Never Cut Spending.Speaking of that:
We have a contemporary precedent for how to reduce the debt. Let’s apply it as a template.
The answer is… progressive taxation. Make sure that guys like** HD** get to keep their $3000 tax cut. Allow the first significant chunk of income be exempt from the necessary Liberal Socialist Democrat Tax Hikes :eek: Obama proposed people earning $250,000 or less per year say in the same tax bracket. Since about a decade will have passed, make the limit $300,000 to throw a bone to the the Rs. Starting at (NOTE: NOT a tax on all the money someone makes if they exceed $300,000 a year, but only dollars after $300,000 a year) $300,000, jack up the personal income tax rate. A rate of X at $300,000, Y for $750,000, Z for 1.25 million, Alpha for over $5 million. You get the idea: tax the rich. But don’t eat 'em, I am actually not malicious towards the rich, I just want a more Constitutionally congruent taxation scheme.
That way, we stimulate the economy by putting more money into the hands of people most likely to spend it, and we extract a defensible extra amount of tax from the wealthiest, who profit from all of our collective labors to be so rich, trust me.