The military budget was just increased to $677 billion/year, so we can expect another $6.7 trillion in spending over the next 10 years. Assuming we don’t expand our operations even further.
I’m not sure there’s any better way to cause debt that producing something, paying to ship it to the other side of the world, and then blowing it up. Or paying $2.1 million/year for each soldier in your army because you deploy almost all of them overseas. But I could be wrong.
If we cut our military spending in half to a more reasonable $338 billion/year we could afford 2 of these massive $1.5 trillion tax cuts without creating any budget deficit.
Just to be clear – some people may read this and think that deficits will go up by $6.7 trillion over the next ten years because of the additional defense spending.
In fact, the increases to defense will amount to something around half a trillion dollar in additional deficits during the next decade. That’s because the past level of defense spending is already factored into future estimated deficits, and it is the INCREASE in defense spending that will impact the INCREASE in future deficits.
To nitpick a bit, it might be only about 4x larger than China’s (a lot of China’s military spending is of a hidden or opaque nature.) But yes, the USA does spend way too much on it.
You’re certainly wrong that we are deploying “almost all of” our soldiers overseas. Or that we are paying $2.1 million for each soldier in the army.
Beyond which, producing things, shipping them across the world and blowing them up does not necessarily contribute to the deficit. We generally have excess productive capacity, which means government procurement adds more than it costs to GDP growth. And in order to have an effective military, we have to ensure the financial health of the defense contracting establishment whether there’s a war on or not.
That is not to say I think we should maintain defense spending at present rates, or keep attacking people.
Yeah, you are wrong. That is the cost for troops deployed in Afghanistan, per your cite. According to that cite, that’s 40,000 troops. That’s a small fraction of the total.
Sure. I can see how you can replace the income tax with a higher employer side tax. I don’t see how you predict what everyone’s state tax burden will be considering everyone’s individual situation being different but I suppose there is some way for them to get rough justice and perhaps even collect more taxes in the bargain.
de Leon in CA (senate Pro Tempore) introduced a bill in CAto allow people to make charitable contributions to a state run fund that would be directed to the state in lieu of paying state income taxes:
Charitable contributions are voluntary, but I don’t think that’s a requirement based on tax law. Kind of a moot point since there are few if any entities that can compel charitable contributions and so these would still be voluntary.
It seems pretty straightforward actually - create a state tax credit for any amount donated to the CA Excellence fund. So when filing your taxes, you determine your state tax liability, and contemporaneously make a donation to the CA excellence fund which would offset your tax liability. The bill also makes the credit associated with this donation carry forward in the event your donation exceeds your tax liability. I see a hurdle for W2 earners who typically withhold their state tax portion, but it’s not that difficult to craft a way around that. Here’s a portion of the text:
Looks like de Leon repurposed a previous bill that he introduced from Feb-17.
Unless the IRS is going to get a shit ton more auditors, I doubt that’s a realistic thing to be concerned with. Even so, bring on the audits if they want, people should be able to handle those. I actually think this has potential. It’s still a long shot because de Leon is a putz but from a legal standpoint I think it would work. And really, if this were to come to pass in NY and CA and any other high tax state, it’s not like congress has the will to go back and specifically pass a law to close this avenue. What are they going to do, put a cap on charitable contributions?
Why aren’t you suggesting that the residents of Arizona and Florida ought to be undergoing heavy audits for the donation schemes that their states have implemented?
The only reason I can figure is that constituents of McCain and Rubio deserve less tax scrutiny than constituents of that gun grabber Feinstein.
