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Where did my taxes go?

wherethefuckdidmytaxesgo.com

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Re: Where did my taxes go?

#211

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

arjie wrote: post #12

This makes it sort of obvious how large the US welfare state is. Medicaid: 10% "Safety Net": 7.1% Social Security: 22.6% Medicare: 14.2% 53.9% of the federal budget is spent on welfare. That seems roughly in line with most Western nations.

My (admitedly superficial) understanding is that in the USA because the welfare state is mostly private, it optimizes for profit. So just because you put a lot into it doesn't mean you get much out. I have no first hand experience of this, but the other day I stumbled upon an article explaining private equity buying up the "ambulance business" and costs balooning, so that tracks.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#212

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

mikepurvis wrote: post #98
fhdkweig wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may just be my cynicism talking, but it seems that it comes down to the power of lobbyists. In the US, the healthcare companies control the government. Elsewhere, the government controls the healthcare companies.

The media narrative is a factor too. Like I have extended family, friends, and work colleagues in the US, many of whom are wealthy and well-traveled and even a lot of them will still loudly assert obviously disprovable untruths like "well at least we don't die in waiting rooms like in Canada" or "at least we don't have death panels deciding who gets to have life-saving treatment" or worst of all "ehh I mean I have go…

> "at least we don't have death panels deciding who gets to have life-saving treatment"

They do, it's just that in the western world the death panels work for the government and optimize for "given a certain level of cost, how do we maximize lives saved", whereas in the USA the death panels work for insurance companies, and optimize for "reduce cost". The latter is a much easier job.

Maybe point your US friends to google "united healthcare denial rates" and check that it's 33%. That's the the death panel at work.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#213

Post by ponector »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #14

As a thought experiment, it'd be interesting to imagine how things would play out if each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go. Agencies could recommend funding levels, Congress could recommend an allocation and if a taxpayer didn't change it, that default would take effect. But if a taxpayer preferred, they could say, "no, I won't be fun…

In Poland in annual tax declaration one can select to which non-profit organization will go 2% of total income tax.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#214

Post by sharts »

overfeed wrote: post #169
animal_spirits wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not put this on America being a failed state. Rather the more 'successful' European countries are far more homogenous in demographics than America ever will be. In Denmark, nearly everyone has the same cultural background and similar values, and are striving for a relatively unified vision/goal for the country. In America, there is such an overwhelming diversity in values and cultures, and added animosity bet…

> Rather the more 'successful' European countries are far more homogenous in demographics than America ever will be. In Denmark, nearly everyone has the same cultural background and similar values, and are striving for a relatively unified vision/goal for the country. Can you explain this reasoning without implying American political leaders (or perhaps broader society) are racist? As a counterpoint France, Germany,…

Is it really on just the political leaders and not the society at large that supports them?

One need not go that far back in history to learn that codified in the legal system was the concept of separate but equal, red lining,, etc. Lynchings were often ignored and thus a public spectacle.

Today you still see the public discourse about women’s rights (e.g potentially jail for abortion in certain states…regardless of the reason), debates on mass migrations/immigration (e.g. little sympathy for legal citizens being deported or killed by ICE, etc).

Public agreement on these issues is a prerequisite to social safety nets.

American history is plagued with examples such as these that have contributed to the culture of rugged individualism.

Perhaps the closest period where some semblance of social safety net wins were achieved were in the FDR years (eg social security), and that was mainly through labor unions / working class pressure.

Do those counterpoint countries have similar histories? and were their social safety nets not from the side of labor vs capital?

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#216

Post by animal_spirits »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #210
animal_spirits wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not put this on America being a failed state. Rather the more 'successful' European countries are far more homogenous in demographics than America ever will be. In Denmark, nearly everyone has the same cultural background and similar values, and are striving for a relatively unified vision/goal for the country. In America, there is such an overwhelming diversity in values and cultures, and added animosity bet…

You think that Europe is more homogeneous than the USA? First time I my life I hear that argument.

Individual European nations are, not Europe as a whole entity.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#217

Post by animal_spirits »

idiotsecant wrote: post #205
animal_spirits wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not put this on America being a failed state. Rather the more 'successful' European countries are far more homogenous in demographics than America ever will be. In Denmark, nearly everyone has the same cultural background and similar values, and are striving for a relatively unified vision/goal for the country. In America, there is such an overwhelming diversity in values and cultures, and added animosity bet…

[flagged]

That's not the only way at all; all I'm saying is it becomes harder to convince the whole of society to adopt social safety nets if they positively affect people that look/act different from someone. I'm just trying to be honest that many many many Americans are racists.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#218

Post by animal_spirits »

overfeed wrote: post #183
overfeed wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather the more 'successful' European countries are far more homogenous in demographics than America ever will be. In Denmark, nearly everyone has the same cultural background and similar values, and are striving for a relatively unified vision/goal for the country. Can you explain this reasoning without implying American political leaders (or perhaps broader society) are racist? As a counterpoint France, Germany,…

Downvote all you want, but y'all still haven't explicitly named the linkage between demographic diversity and American tax policy vis-a-vis threadbare social safety. Instead of asking the reader to fill in the gaps, I challenge anyone who believes it to explain the mechanism linking the diversity prior/stimulus to the tax policy result, and why it only happens in America.

America is broadly racist, that's exactly my point!

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#219

Post by lamasery »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #14

As a thought experiment, it'd be interesting to imagine how things would play out if each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go. Agencies could recommend funding levels, Congress could recommend an allocation and if a taxpayer didn't change it, that default would take effect. But if a taxpayer preferred, they could say, "no, I won't be fun…

You would get so much weird shit happening if you did this.

For example, if you ask your average normal person who's critical of foreign aid spending how much they think we should spend on it, if they don't answer "zero dollars" (and most don't!) they're very likely to name a percent of the budget that would represent a huge increase in our foreign aid spending. This is because they think it's a far larger part of the budget than it is (probably because it's received such a huge amount of attention that they assume it must be a lot, or else why would their trusted media figures complain about it so much?)

Misconceptions like that abound. Like, you wanna guess where most people are gonna shift some of that money if you remind them to make sure they allow enough funding for maintaining our nuclear weapon stockpile, but don't tell them exactly where to put that money? I bet it's not the Department of Energy.

Moreover, this would just incentivize politicians for both nefarious and benevolent reasons to bundle unrelated stuff into departments that people choose to fund better, laundering their popularity into necessary-but-obscure services or pet-project/corruption stuff.

Re: Where did my taxes go?

#220

Post by lamasery »

joquarky wrote: post #202
jerlam wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police do something similar when a mayoral candidate promises to rein in police spending, it's called the blue flu and it's basically a strike.

I find it odd that the people with the kind of mindset that is driven to become police are even willing to entertain the idea of joining a union.

Well theirs is good, of course, because it protects them from soft-on-crime liberals who want open borders and communism and want to keep them from doing their jobs with ridiculous "ethical standards" and "laws governing acceptable use of force" and "civil rights" and other stupid pro-criminal shit like that.
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