How can we reduce the national debt by $1 trillion?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
Cato, 2023 ran the math. If Congress confiscated every dollar earned by individuals and businesses past their first $500,000, it would still be about $200 billion short of covering the cost of next year’s projected $1.7 trillion deficit—unrealistically assuming no behavioral or other economic effects from taxing 100 percent of earnings. |
Anonymous
Shhh you really should post anonymously |
Anonymous
Tariffs are not a revenue source. WE will pay those. It’s just another word for tax. |
Anonymous
| Immediately dissolve the PCAST idea, it’s going to cost a fortune to pay all those “industry leaders” to sit around and have lunch and chat |
Anonymous
The math doesn’t work out to just cut non-military discretionary spending. There has to be a little bit of pain on all sides. Rein in military spending, raise the tax cap on Social Security, trim the other parts, and adjust taxes but keep the overall structure progressive. |
Anonymous
|
Very simple. Raise spending so that the deficit goes from 1.7 trillion to 3 trillion per year. Raising the ten year deficit by 13 trillion+interest.
Then after one year cut the budget so that the deficit is only 2.8 trillion per year. This will cut the ten year deficit by 1.8 trillion, and Democrats will complain about the Republicans draconian cuts. |
Anonymous
| Eliminate the Marine Corps (this will require some law changes). End DOE, ED, HUD, AG-SNAP, Raise the retirement age to 75. Raise medicare eligibility to 70. |
Anonymous
+1 Those people have been paying about 6% federal taxes on average. It’s obscene. |
Anonymous
The math on that idea shows that the GWB and Trump tax cuts added $10 trillion to the debt. Reversing those tax cuts will reverse a chunk of the deficit. Additionally, we should probably be considering a wealth tax on high-wealth individuals, for example a 2% wealth tax on Americans worth over $50 million. It could generate between $2.75 and $3.75 trillion in revenue over 10 years. Elizabeth Warren has proposed such a wealth tax. A 2% tax is also below the rate of inflation so even worst case that wealthy individual's wealth would continue to grow. Republicans poisoned the well on taxation with Grover Norquist insanity. That's another thing that needs to be fixed. Any Republican who thinks the ONLY way to reduce the deficit is to cut spending and who absolutely refuses to consider the revenue side needs to be tossed out of office. |
Anonymous
The importers pay the tariffs, and pass them on to the downstream customers. That means, a 20% tariff on Chinese imports will make a lot of the household goods Americans buy at Target and Walmart 20% more expensive. Sadly the people who voted for this do not yet realize this, but they will soon. |
Anonymous
| Change the tax laws for nonprofits. Make most of them taxable. |
Anonymous
CATO's math ain't mathin. Such a tax on corporations alone would generate around $2.25 trillion, plus another $720 billion if it were done to individuals, far exceeding the $1.7t deficit. Now I'm not saying a proposal to tax all revenue and income over $500,000 is a good idea, but it does certainly show that we could and probably should start taxing corporations a bit more to help make up the deficit. But that's CATO's job, to masquerade as a "think tank" to put out propaganda protecting big corporations and oligarchs from taxation and regulation. |
Anonymous
Tariffs ARE taxes. Do you think Chinese companies who now run their factories in Mexico are going to eat the cost ? They wouldn’t have relocated to Mexico! Time for a relocation to another country for them to build their factories. The transportation costs and price hikes will get passed along to the consumer one way or another. They aren’t building things in the US. It’s cost and regulation prohibitive. |
Anonymous
Basically this, so it will never happen. You can either inflate your way out as an earlier poster mentioned, or you just default on some/all of it. Those are the only two real options. |
Anonymous
Tax the wealthy and corporations first, and then start looking at nonprofits. Tax churches and religious organizations that get involved in political campaigning, many of them have been severely pushing the limits of 503(c) given some of them engage in overt activities like robocalls, attack ads and political advertising, and so on. And I still am pretty damn annoyed over the crap from a few years ago where IRS got lambasted for "going after" conservative groups applying for 501(c) status. IRS horribly mishandled the whole situation but the issue is that those orgs should have been flat out denied in the first place. If the name of your group is something like "Tea Party Patriots" I have absolutely NO idea how you could ever claim you're "non political" for 501(c) status. |