Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US Debt Clock Live

us-debt-clock.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–27 of 27 posts

Re: US Debt Clock Live

#21

Post by M95D »

someguydave wrote: post #18
slg wrote: post #2

I feel like the well has been poisoned regarding national debt talk. There is simply no point in having a conversation about the debt without discussing how revenue should be raised and/or expenses lowered. That means someone focusing purely on the debt being bad is likely doing it because they know their specific proposals for addressing it won't be popular.

Raising taxes is really not part of the solution because increasing tax rate rates will likely not yield more tax collection. The real problem is immense spending on seniors to live a free life

I'm not from US. How is federal gov. spending on seniors? AFAIK, there are no state pensions. Or am I wrong?

Re: US Debt Clock Live

#22

Post by M95D »

kemotep wrote: post #8

If I could wave a magic wand and get the policies I want, I would abolish essentially all taxes except a Land Value Tax. At an average of $10,000 per acre and a roughly 1.4 Billion acres of private property that we could “reasonably” collect on, that is $14 Trillion in Revenue per year. Split between the Federal, State, and Local governments proportionally, leaving around ~$8 trillion for the Feds. If we could keep t…

You can't tax all land the same. Food will get very expensive.

Re: US Debt Clock Live

#24

Post by kemotep »

M95D wrote: post #22
kemotep wrote: post #8

If I could wave a magic wand and get the policies I want, I would abolish essentially all taxes except a Land Value Tax. At an average of $10,000 per acre and a roughly 1.4 Billion acres of private property that we could “reasonably” collect on, that is $14 Trillion in Revenue per year. Split between the Federal, State, and Local governments proportionally, leaving around ~$8 trillion for the Feds. If we could keep t…

You can't tax all land the same. Food will get very expensive.

Of course which is why I said average. And farmers (and everyone else) would not be paying taxes on income, payroll taxes for field hands, gas taxes, import/export taxes, and so on so for many this could be a significant tax cut or a wash with what they already pay.

And inefficient land uses would be taxed out and others who would more productively use the land could take over.

But this is a pure fantasy scenario to start with because of the millions of people in the suburbs who already hate the concept of property taxes and whose land use directly would be impacted by such a tax.

Re: US Debt Clock Live

#25

Post by daft_pink »

slg wrote: post #16
daft_pink wrote: post #13

I used to deeply care about this, but I find that generally the party not in power always complains about this and then immediately stops complaining once they are in power, so I have trouble taking it seriously. For Example: Republicans when Obama was in Office, Democrats when Trump is in Office, Republicans when Biden is in Office It’s been like 2 decades of both parties complaining and then doing nothing about it…

Scroll down to the Debt By President section and switch over from chronological list to By % Increase. Of the last 11 completed presidential terms, 6 of the 7 biggest increases have been Republican and the 4 smallest increases have all been Democrats. "Both sides are the same" claims simply have no basis in reality when it comes to the national debt.

I didn’t really mean that both sides are the same. I meant that both sides drum up crisis rhetoric when they aren’t in power and ignore it when they are in power, but when they are in power they all increase anyways.

Therefore voting for either party isn’t going to result in an actual decrease, because there is no serious party in the United States that is objectively trying to reduce the deficit.

Re: US Debt Clock Live

#27

Post by someguydave »

M95D wrote: post #21
someguydave wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raising taxes is really not part of the solution because increasing tax rate rates will likely not yield more tax collection. The real problem is immense spending on seniors to live a free life

I'm not from US. How is federal gov. spending on seniors? AFAIK, there are no state pensions. Or am I wrong?

Unfortunately you are wrong. While people don't "own" a pension, they do get government payments for life after they hit age 65 as long as they (very minimal) work to earn an income during their working years. (This is social security). They also get free healthcare for life at 65 and if they are unable to pay for full time round-the clock hospital care they get that free too (Medicaid).

All-in the US governments spends $2,700 billion per year on seniors which is nearly triple the defense spending.

Post reply on HN