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Trump Proposes Eliminating Income Taxes For People Earning Less Than $150k/year.

JohnfrmClevelan said:
Your flip answer shows that you don't understand why we run deficits and amass debt in the first place.

I started a thread on the subject not so long ago. Few were interested in the why, compared to the number who have strong opinions on the subject.
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IMHO, ‘our’ congress critters continuously engage in annual federal deficit (stimulus?) spending because doing so gets them re-elected at a rate of over 90%. The bottom line is (more) federal spending is politically popular while (more) federal taxation isn’t.
 
JohnfrmClevelan said:
Your flip answer shows that you don't understand why we run deficits and amass debt in the first place.

I started a thread on the subject not so long ago. Few were interested in the why, compared to the number who have strong opinions on the subject.
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That is because the politics of why there are deficits and debt has more room for error along political lines that one may agree with, the economics of deficits and debt ends up muted because it does not fit into the spectrum of how Democrats and Republicans today approach taxation and spending.

Technically @ttwtt78640 is correct, and I've argued the same, that modern politics boils down to treasury promises. More contribution to it in taxation, more spending from it for whatever goal, or some terrible combination of the two.

I've often gone a step further and suggested that anytime deficits get very low, and the few years we've run a surplus, were accidents. Collisions of impressive economic conditions, political grid lock between Congress and a President, and not really purposeful fiscal and trade policy.

The "strong opinions" end up entirely political, as well as the when part those strong opinions show up because of a number. $30 Trillion, $35 Trillion, approaching $37 Trillion, when to pass over a debt ceiling and when to engage in some threat because of who controls what branch of government.

The shame here is that economic principles are discarded, but running a close second is the when people get upset about these things.
 
Step one. Change the title to "Bernie proposes eliminating taxes on those earning less than 150,000...."

Step two. Could up the number of leftists who are not sentient in any meaningful way.
 
JohnfrmClevelan said:
Your flip answer shows that you don't understand why we run deficits and amass debt in the first place.

I started a thread on the subject not so long ago. Few were interested in the why, compared to the number who have strong opinions on the subject.
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what's that thread link please
 
stealthycat said:
no country in the world has the debt we do
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Sure. No country in the world has the amount of financial assets we do. You have no point.
stealthycat said:
adding 1.5-2 trillion a year in debt is unsustainable
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That's not true. All that matters is the economy grows faster than debt accumulation.
stealthycat said:
eventually we'll default and that will be global chaos don't ya think ?
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Nope. The only way we default is of we make the political choice to default. Why do you speak about this stuff with such conviction even though you can't even begin to grasp the totality?
 
Kushinator said:
Sure. No country in the world has the amount of financial assets we do. You have no point.
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List of countries by financial assets per capita - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

want to compare their debt to ours ?

how about this one

Top 10 countries by total wealth, 2022
  1. United States (30.8%)
  2. China (18.6%)
  3. Japan (5%)
  4. Germany (3.8%)
  5. France (3.5%)
  6. United Kingdom (3.5%)
  7. India (3.4%)
  8. Canada (2.5%)
  9. Italy (2.4%)
  10. South Korea (2.2%)
  11. Rest of the world (24.4%)
here - you can cross reference

List of countries by external debt - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

China has 2/3 our wealth ... .what is their national debt ? 2.5 trillion

Kushinator said:
That's not true. All that matters is the economy grows faster than debt accumulation.

Nope. The only way we default is of we make the political choice to default. Why do you speak about this stuff with such conviction even though you can't even begin to grasp the totality?
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then eliminate taxes and watch people pour their money into buying stuff, right ?
 
Kushinator said:
Sure. No country in the world has the amount of financial assets we do. You have no point.

That's not true. All that matters is the economy grows faster than debt accumulation.

Nope. The only way we default is of we make the political choice to default. Why do you speak about this stuff with such conviction even though you can't even begin to grasp the totality?
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OK, but our national debt is growing faster than our GDP, otherwise our national debt would never have exceeded our annual GDP.

fred.stlouisfed.org

Federal Debt: Total Public Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product

View the ratio of federal debt to the economic output of the U.S., which can indicate economic health and the sustainability of government borrowing.
fred.stlouisfed.org
 
AZRWinger said:
After the failed Mueller witchhunt, 2 failed impeachments, a KGB style House select committee show trial, a lurid fake dossier, and 4 sets of blatantly political criminal indictments, along with dozens of fake news phony scandals like Trump endorsed white supremacists as good people, the mindless zealot followers of Orange Man Bad continue to reflexively oppose anything Trump. Bitter deadender Bad Orange Man disciples unable to cope with the election loss have taken to defending illegal alien MS-13 and other gang members as well as "students" advocating ethnic cleansing of Israel by flooding selected district courts with lawsuits. Strip out the adjectives only necessary for demagoguery and you are left sputtering condemnation for anyone who doesn't join the Orange Man Bad lynch mob.
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This is one of the most unhinged rants I’ve seen here on DP.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
IMHO, ‘our’ congress critters continuously engage in annual federal deficit (stimulus?) spending because doing so gets them re-elected at a rate of over 90%. The bottom line is (more) federal spending is politically popular while (more) federal taxation isn’t.
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I dunno... the last goodie package I can remember was Biden's COVID stimulus, and that didn't get him re-elected, nor did it keep Dem seats safe. Plus, it was in response to a real economic problem, not just a giveaway for the sake of making people happy. People get real excited about tax cuts, too, until they see how little it affects their taxes. I think that the vast majority of federal spending is there for good reasons, and just slowly builds up.

But the reason we have deficits (and the resulting "debt") is because of demand leakages. Income is what we use to buy our production, and when people save some of their income, that demand must be replaced with a combination of increased private sector debt and federal deficit spending. Deficits are baked into our economy, because we run trade deficits (savings by foreign parties, basically) and we save out of income. The more we save, the higher our deficits, and rich people are the ones doing almost all of the saving. I doubt that most people make the connection, but they can see the difference between their incomes and those of musk, Bezos, Gates, etc., and they can feel something is amiss.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
OK, but our national debt is growing faster than our GDP,
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Massive tax cuts combined with various crises will do that.

The point is, anyone talking about paying down national debt is a ****ing moron.
 
Kushinator said:
Massive tax cuts combined with various crises will do that.

The point is, anyone talking about paying down national debt is a ****ing moron.
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Few (if any) are suggesting paying down the national debt, since most are advocating to slow its growth.
 
Kushinator said:
🤣
@VanceMack and @stealthycat did in this very thread. That's how you know they have nothing of value to add to the discussion.
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I used to be a big "lets figure out how to pay down the national debt" guy

now?

now I'm a "stop taxing people's income" guy because the ONLY way out of $37 trillion and climbing national debt is default

that's it - period, end of story so might as well run that debt to $100 trillion
 
Kushinator said:
Huh?

You have no business discussing this topic. Hunter Biden dick pics??? That's more your area of expertise.
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the links hurt, don't they ?

look, China has a great amount of wealth - 2nd, to USA. They are 2nd in GDP

they have a fraction of the trillions in debt we do ( $37 trillion to $2 trillion )

why ?
 
SkyChief said:
Trump's goal is to eliminate Income Taxes for people earning less than $150k per year.

Eliminating taxes for people who earn less than $150,000 would effectively eliminate taxes for the vast majority of the country’s population.

Individual Income Taxes are the largest source of revenue for the U.S. government. So far in fiscal year 2025, individuals have paid $1.14 trillion in taxes, which is 51% of the total tax revenue collected, according to the Department of Treasury.

The Trump administration’s attempts to replace income taxes with import taxes is more likely to benefit high-income households rather than lower- or middle-income ones.

“We’re going to make a lot of money, and we’re going to cut taxes for the people of this country,” - Trump

source: https://moneywise.com/taxes/trumps-...-no-tax-for-people-making-under-150000-a-year

I just wish Trump would slightly raise the no-tax cutoff point to $162k/year.
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I gather this is not on the big beautiful bill.
 
SkyChief said:
Trump's goal is to eliminate Income Taxes for people earning less than $150k per year.
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Funny watching so-called conservatives embracing his tax-the-rich ideas. And so called-liberals rejecting them.

The cult of personality is strong on both sides of the aisle.
 
j brown's body said:
I gather this is not on the big beautiful bill.
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No this is down the road - presumably when GOP picks up the necessary seats after mid-term elections.

Trump's tax elimination plan would never have any hopes of passing with the current Congress.
 
devildavid said:
No, gold and silver were always valued because human beings artificially gave them value. Gold and jewels were always artificially valued by human beings, but their value is artificial, not inherent. Those metals are artificially valued becasue human beings decided that they were for whatever irrational reasons humans place value on shiny things. Their only value was acceptance by most humans as having the value that they gave to them. Human beings arbitrarily assign value to everything that was ever used as a means of buying other things with them. Any value resides in the goods and services that these forms of currency can purchase from willing participants in a economic system.
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This is something even austrians agree with.
 
stealthycat said:
I used to be a big "lets figure out how to pay down the national debt" guy

now?

now I'm a "stop taxing people's income" guy because the ONLY way out of $37 trillion and climbing national debt is default

that's it - period, end of story so might as well run that debt to $100 trillion
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So you still view sovereign bonds as equivalent to household-type debt, then?

What if the country had, instead of issuing bonds, simply printed up cash for their deficit spending? Lots of loose money sloshing around in the economy, but no "debt."

Or what if the central bank bought up all of those bonds with reserves? Same outcome - lots of cash floating around, looking for a safe place to sit.

Treasuries provide that safe place for cash to rest, and they have the added benefit of removing cash from circulation, unlike any other investment.
 
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