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

Tax Wrapped 2025

taxwrapped.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 77 posts

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#51

Post by ajross »

xphos wrote: post #49
ajross wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... do you have cash in a money market account? What do you think the "money market" is, exactly?

In the nicest way possible no absolutely not that would way underperform just about everything

Not over the last few months, obviously. But in general I've never known a serious trader who didn't maintain a cash balance at some non-trivial level, if only to maintain liquidity for low-latency bets.

But regardless, the point was that all the "cash" you see in your investment accounts (even if you, personally, don't carry any) is predominantly treasuries and other short term high-confidence debt. Everyone owns treasuries, it's only true that very few people "buy" treasury notes.

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#52

Post by wyre »

ajross wrote: post #51
xphos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the nicest way possible no absolutely not that would way underperform just about everything

Not over the last few months, obviously. But in general I've never known a serious trader who didn't maintain a cash balance at some non-trivial level, if only to maintain liquidity for low-latency bets. But regardless, the point was that all the "cash" you see in your investment accounts (even if you, personally, don't carry any) is predominantly treasuries and other short term high-confidence debt. Everyone owns tr…

No, my point was that not everyone has an investment account, period.

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#53

Post by ajross »

wyre wrote: post #52
ajross wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not over the last few months, obviously. But in general I've never known a serious trader who didn't maintain a cash balance at some non-trivial level, if only to maintain liquidity for low-latency bets. But regardless, the point was that all the "cash" you see in your investment accounts (even if you, personally, don't carry any) is predominantly treasuries and other short term high-confidence debt. Everyone owns tr…

No, my point was that not everyone has an investment account, period.

Well, your statement was that a "meaningful population of the target audience" did not "have any meaningful amount of treasuries in their portfolio". And that's wrong. Basically everyone holds treasuries. Some people don't. Most people do.

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#54

Post by rsingel »

You can't meaningfully calculate the budget including social security. This is a trust fund that you get back depending on how much you made and how long you live. And whether the outlays are taxed or not depends on your income at payment.

The whole site would be way more informative if social security was broken out.

Even better if it included how much you and your employer spend on health care, because most people are literally spending more because there is no universal health care.

The only thing useful in the whole thing is how much tax money goes to "defense"

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#55

Post by wyre »

ajross wrote: post #53
wyre wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, my point was that not everyone has an investment account, period.

Well, your statement was that a "meaningful population of the target audience" did not "have any meaningful amount of treasuries in their portfolio". And that's wrong. Basically everyone holds treasuries. Some people don't. Most people do.

Look it up. Half of Americans don’t own stock or investment. By any definition that is considered a “meaningful population”.

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#56

Post by krackers »

>See what the federal government spent with your tax dollars.

Is thinking of it in this sense actually accurate? I always assumed since every government has embraced MMT they can spend whatever they want simply by printing it out of thin air. Then taxation could be understood as the only crude knob to "destroy money", and also has the effect of forcing USD to be the primary national currency (e.g. owning bitcoin won't do you any good if you ultimately need to pay taxes in USD).

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#57

Post by Steve6 »

woodruffw wrote: post #38
Steve6 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you ignore ALL other tax spending (which is a huge ask) the best possible outcome is $1 in = $1 out. That breaks even at best. The government isn't creating value it's just moving money around. Now add in other wasteful spending. Add in inefficiencies. Add in the deficit. Add in inflation and money printing. Add changing administrations with their own goals. Add wars and other foreign affairs. Add in spying o…

That's not really how taxes work. Some of your mine (and mine) is essentially front-loaded into today's social safety net, ensuring that the poor, infirm, etc. are afforded certain minimums in terms of quality of life. The $1 I put into that doesn't "come back" to me in cash; I get it in the form of a society that has fewer people going hungry, dying from treatable conditions, etc. This is where the argument around e…

The original post is about ALL federal spending (funded by taxes). Not just the social safety net. You can't hand wave the bad stuff away. If you want to argue that "fewer people going hungry, [and] dying from treatable conditions" is good, that's fine. I agree. But you can't ignore "inflation, etc." that are caused by the same federal government and wars funded by the same taxes. Saying it "has essentially nothing to do with the matter" is simply not true. It's all related.

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#58

Post by unmole »

krackers wrote: post #56

>See what the federal government spent with your tax dollars. Is thinking of it in this sense actually accurate? I always assumed since every government has embraced MMT they can spend whatever they want simply by printing it out of thin air. Then taxation could be understood as the only crude knob to "destroy money", and also has the effect of forcing USD to be the primary national currency (e.g. owning bitcoin won'…

> since every government has embraced MMT

This is doing a lot of imaginary heavy lifting.

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#59

Post by Steve6 »

fhdkweig wrote: post #44
Steve6 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you ignore ALL other tax spending (which is a huge ask) the best possible outcome is $1 in = $1 out. That breaks even at best. The government isn't creating value it's just moving money around. Now add in other wasteful spending. Add in inefficiencies. Add in the deficit. Add in inflation and money printing. Add changing administrations with their own goals. Add wars and other foreign affairs. Add in spying o…

> Even if you ignore ALL other tax spending (which is a huge ask) the best possible outcome is $1 in = $1 out. That breaks even at best. The government isn't creating value it's just moving money around. It is possible to spend money that gets more money back later. Think of investing in infrastructure that creates more economic activity. Imagine how much better the economy grew once we connected the transcontinental…

I understand. And I get it. I also want the best infrastructure and economy possible. The theory is getting taxes and master planning a big project will eventually pay off more than it costs. But you have to remember, when taxes are involved you're really talking about how to spend other people's money. I would argue that the best way to help people is simply to not tax them and let them spend on the things they value the most.

The same argument you're making is commonly used to build tax subsidized sports stadiums. I'm curious if you agree with that as a valid use for local taxes.

In my previous message I mentioned "back door deals with giant corporations and insider trading" as a bad thing. Well, the bigger the master planned project is, the more incentive there is for shenanigans.

Re: Tax Wrapped 2025

#60

Post by Steve6 »

craftkiller wrote: post #28
Steve6 wrote: post #19

This is amazing and depressing. Most people will never get any benefit from this spending, definitely not of equal value to what you contributed/lost/spent. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum you should be disappointed by the federal governments reckless spending. Yet it never gets better. Likely never will. I see other people recommending taxes that are missed, but with people being taxed from every…

My top category was social security, followed by medicare. If I live long enough, I'll benefit from both of these. But regardless, these are great things to put our money towards. I'd much rather lose a couple tens of thousands per year than have our elderly dying homeless and hungry. The next category was military which I think we can all agree that US spends too much on the military but it would be silly to claim t…

Everyone will have those as their top 4. ;)

I agree that helping the elderly, homeless, and hungry is good. Everyone does. The question is: Is the government making a better use of that money than you would? I believe the answer is a strong "NO". You do not get to keep the good and ignore the bad.

Lastly if you've ever walked around any major US city you'll see plenty of elderly, homeless, and hungry folk. So I'm not convinced any money going towards that goal has helped much. Haha

Post reply on HN