In 1960 the top tax rate was 91%. In 1980 it was 70%. Reagan dropped it to 35% and it's stayed below 40% since. Then add in that corporations and the wealthy have moved away from having normal income that isn't taxed (loans backed by assets) and you've lost half the tax revenue that paid for cheap housing, nearly free healthcare and public college and you have a healthy society and middle class.
But then to screw the pooch even more, Bush printed 5 trillion for his wars and two tax cuts. Trump printed money for his tax cuts too. (these expenses were never in the annual budget - they just printed the money)
Tesla, one of the richest corporations in our country just reported 0% tax in three years.
Our national debt has nothing to do with the annual budget and expenses, including USAID and helping Ukraine.
It is 100% because of tax policy.
So what actually is driving the national debt higher? The never popular answer is entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) + interest, which is exasperated by an aging population. In fact, almost all future debt growth is driven by these programs. The rest of the budget is expected to balance out. Tax revenue is expected to increase, and discretionary spending is expected to fall as a % of GDP.
The government "borrowed" from the SS fund. That's why it's endangered. The money was there and it should still be there.
The government also screwed the postal service by taking their profits (one of the few things in government that actually makes one) and then yells at them for not making enough income.
We need a flat corporate and billionaire tax that has no loopholes.
Also doesn't help if you borrow against the money put in. The US is not alone in taking money from the baby's/old peoples fund unfortunately, same happened here but worse the money was just taken. Although it was mostly spend on education and construction so there is that at least.
Replace Medicare and Medicaid with a socialised 1 payer system as it would be much cheaper. The numbers I saw was that the current system costs 48t and 1 payer system would be 32t. And negotiate down costs and all materials and drugs on top of that.
Simple - the payroll tax doesn't raise enough funds to cover the full cost of the program. Even if it did raise 100% of the needed funds, that's still money Congress cannot tax a second time. At the end of the day, the government has two buckets: income and expenses. It doesn't matter whether some of that income is called "payroll tax", and some of it is called "income tax". Every cent raised through a payroll tax, is a cent that cannot be raised through an income tax, and visa-versa.
>Replace Medicare and Medicaid with a socialised 1 payer system as it would be much cheaper.
Yet...none of the advocates of a socialized healthcare system have ever put forward a real bill that can be rated by the Congressional Budget Office. Instead, they put forward shell bills which importantly lack any funding mechanisms.
> The numbers I saw was that the current system costs 48t and 1 payer system would be 32t.
The current system is divided between public and private spending. Even if you could reduce the overall cost to 32T, that's still a net cost increase on the public side. How will the government raise that money? The advocates for social healthcare never say.
If it's removed and replaced with nothing do you just let old people die in the streets? Or did you want to keep the tax but stop paying out? I don't see how the outcome is different then.
Increase income tax on the wealthy? It's not hard, you used to do it.
It takes money from the general fund in the form of interest payments. And the CBO assumes that when the 3T in assets run out in about ten years, there will be some kind of continuous bailout whereby money from the general fund is used to plug the shortfall.
>If it's removed and replaced with nothing do you just let old people die in the streets?
You don't have to remove it entirely. You could implement means testing so that only those who truly need it receive money.
>Increase income tax on the wealthy? It's not hard, you used to do it.
It wouldn't generate enough revenue. Social Security and Medicare, and their associated interest payments are expected to run a ~100T deficit over the next 30 years. If you want to go the "just raise taxes" route to bridge that, you'll have to raise taxes on everybody. If you doubled middle class taxes and implemented a 20% VAT, it might raise enough to stabilize social security and medicare. But that would be the largest tax increase in American history, and Americans would receive no new benefits in return.