Austerity Doesn’t Work

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 2022 Massachusetts raised taxes on millionaires by 4%, and conservatives said the rich would flee. Instead, the state saw a 39% increase in the number of millionaires. The state passed universal free breakfast and lunch for all public school children. It is now one of the least poverty-stricken states in the country. NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani proposed raising taxes on the rich by 2%.

Millionaires like someone has over $1-2 m saved for retirement ?

Does it matter? Someone with a million in retirement is not going to be a drain on the system.

Assuming social security might disappear, assuming the typical American does not have a pension, $1 million isn't enough to retire on. Even a low cost of living area would require closer to $1.3 million in savings to retire. $1m would only give you around $40k annual drawdown to live on in the typical scenarios. Only around 3.2% of American retirees even have $1m in retirement savings to begin with, meaning if social security goes away, 96.8% of Americans are screwed. If you were to count all assets and for example figure on reverse mortgage, giving up your home and leaving nothing to your kids the number goes up to 18% who could come up with a $40k drawdown, which is still pretty grim.

And what's kind of bizarre and ironic about that is that your typical MAGA thinks if social security goes away that would be just fine and that they themselves somehow won't be a part of that or face any economic hardship. Again, that number is just 3.2% of retirees and half of them would be Democrats. And cost of living for retirees will go up even higher if Republicans mess with healthcare. There's a lot of deep delusion among MAGA. Magical thinking about how their retirement will work out if Republicans make good on the stuff they threaten to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxing "the rich" accomplishes little, leaving aside the morality of unilaterally taking money from people who are successful to redistribute it to those who are not, and calling that "fair". Countries with high levels of taxation have uniformly lower standards of living along with their more expansive social services - everybody gets to live in a small house or apartment, drive a small car, have small appliances, and have little disposable income. In return, they receive socialized medicine which, by all reports, is better than nothing but not necessarily by much, especially if you need timely or sophisticated care.

Different models and different outcomes. Not everyone wants to live like a typical Swede or Englishman but would prefer instead the opportunity for a better lifestyle, even if that is not guaranteed in a free market economy.

You seem ok with children going hungry so billionaires get a tax break. You are what is wrong with America.

No child is hungry because someone developed a successful product or service and thereby became wealthy. Dependence on the government to feed one's children reveals more about the parents of such children than it does about people who have been successful and who don't depend on the government to keep them fed.

Dependence on the government to feed one's children reveals that American jobs don't pay living wages, it reveals that we have too much greed in our system with not enough oversight and cost control, which has made things like housing, healthcare costs, utility bills and other things that put that pain on people. Housing costs have spiraled out of control, with investors buying huge amounts of housing stock, new housing construction costs continue to increase disproportionately, and so on, with very little private sector innovation or initiative to drive any of that down.

Likewise healthcare costs, there's no legitimate reason why for example an MRI scan should cost over $1000 in the US when in most other countries it costs less than $150. It's the same piece of equipment, same procedure, same level of training. An appendectomy in the US costs 3-4x more in the US than it does anywhere else. A c-section delivery costs 3-4x more in the US than it does anywhere else. Same with colonoscopies, and many other routine procedures. And why does a prescription for Lantus cost $300 a month in the US when it's only $50 in places like Japan, or why does Xarelto cost $450 in the US and only $90 or less elsewhere, and so on? We lack price controls, we don't negotiate, we have a broken and fragmented healthcare system that is full of rampant inefficiencies that drives bloat everywhere.

You are presuming to lecture from an obvious position of wealth privilege, completely out of touch with what the rest of America is struggling with right now. You'd be better off shutting your mouth and listening more than presuming to try and lecture us with your ignorance.

Spoken like someone who had children they can't afford, and who looks to the government to support their choices instead of to themselves. Why should your bad choices be a burden on the rest of us? Personal responsibility is a concept which evidently eludes you.

Non-sequitur response. You are not actually responding to anything in the previous post, at all. Where did it say anything about "I can't afford to feed my kids?" You sound like a weird propaganda bot. Either that or you have nothing but a juvenile attitude, a flailing debate style, and a lack of sufficiently robust talking points.

Looks like you have only a rant, and not a persuasive argument. People get the wages the market offers them for their particular skills and efforts. Why should higher-earning people subsidize those earning less?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Austerity very much does work!!! It's been done several times over the years in multiple countries, but it needs to be done right. The USA is not doing anything of the sort. It's paying the rich with money from the poor. A Reverse Robin Hood.

Austerity measures work to right the national ship when economists guide the process, usually under pressure from the World Bank/IMF or in the case of Greece or other such EU countries, the European Union.

Don't confuse "austerity measures" as announced by various governments, when really they're anything but, and real economic processes to get debt under control, corruption reduced and government finances healthy again. It's VERY painful to live in a country that is undergoing an austerity practice. The average individual will not notice any gains, just pain. The nation will benefit after several years, and the gains will be mathematically measurable, but it's a process that can take a long time.

Maybe you were thinking about autarky? Yeah, that one never works. We're a global economy, for better or worse.

Hold the phone there. Greece's recovery wasn't entirely "austerity" - a big part of it was tax enforcement, creating non-political tax agency and going after rampant tax evasion with digital tax filing and stricter oversight, which greatly improved revenue. They also received billions in bailouts from the EU.

They solved some problems with hiring and firing and labor practices, and consolidated fragmented pension and retirement systems. They invested in broadband and other things to spur business and help markets, along with incentivizing Greeks abroad to return to stem the brain drain. They also did a lot to try and spur more tourism and other things.

The problem is that Republicans are anti-government-investment, and refuse to even look at doing anything on the revenue side other than to cut taxes, especially for the richest. They are not pragmatic or realistic and are openly hostile to education and educated, higher-earning professionals in the workforce, they are hostile to foreigners, which risks putting a damper on tourism, and so on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxing "the rich" accomplishes little, leaving aside the morality of unilaterally taking money from people who are successful to redistribute it to those who are not, and calling that "fair". Countries with high levels of taxation have uniformly lower standards of living along with their more expansive social services - everybody gets to live in a small house or apartment, drive a small car, have small appliances, and have little disposable income. In return, they receive socialized medicine which, by all reports, is better than nothing but not necessarily by much, especially if you need timely or sophisticated care.

Different models and different outcomes. Not everyone wants to live like a typical Swede or Englishman but would prefer instead the opportunity for a better lifestyle, even if that is not guaranteed in a free market economy.

You seem ok with children going hungry so billionaires get a tax break. You are what is wrong with America.

No child is hungry because someone developed a successful product or service and thereby became wealthy. Dependence on the government to feed one's children reveals more about the parents of such children than it does about people who have been successful and who don't depend on the government to keep them fed.

Dependence on the government to feed one's children reveals that American jobs don't pay living wages, it reveals that we have too much greed in our system with not enough oversight and cost control, which has made things like housing, healthcare costs, utility bills and other things that put that pain on people. Housing costs have spiraled out of control, with investors buying huge amounts of housing stock, new housing construction costs continue to increase disproportionately, and so on, with very little private sector innovation or initiative to drive any of that down.

Likewise healthcare costs, there's no legitimate reason why for example an MRI scan should cost over $1000 in the US when in most other countries it costs less than $150. It's the same piece of equipment, same procedure, same level of training. An appendectomy in the US costs 3-4x more in the US than it does anywhere else. A c-section delivery costs 3-4x more in the US than it does anywhere else. Same with colonoscopies, and many other routine procedures. And why does a prescription for Lantus cost $300 a month in the US when it's only $50 in places like Japan, or why does Xarelto cost $450 in the US and only $90 or less elsewhere, and so on? We lack price controls, we don't negotiate, we have a broken and fragmented healthcare system that is full of rampant inefficiencies that drives bloat everywhere.

You are presuming to lecture from an obvious position of wealth privilege, completely out of touch with what the rest of America is struggling with right now. You'd be better off shutting your mouth and listening more than presuming to try and lecture us with your ignorance.

Spoken like someone who had children they can't afford, and who looks to the government to support their choices instead of to themselves. Why should your bad choices be a burden on the rest of us? Personal responsibility is a concept which evidently eludes you.

Non-sequitur response. You are not actually responding to anything in the previous post, at all. Where did it say anything about "I can't afford to feed my kids?" You sound like a weird propaganda bot. Either that or you have nothing but a juvenile attitude, a flailing debate style, and a lack of sufficiently robust talking points.

Looks like you have only a rant, and not a persuasive argument. People get the wages the market offers them for their particular skills and efforts. Why should higher-earning people subsidize those earning less?

YOU are the one without a persuasive argument.

If you can't manage to run your business without exploiting people, then you have a bad business model and shouldn't even be in business in the first place. If you are employing someone fulltime, you should at a bare minimum be paying them a living wage, PERIOD. And it's not a "subsidy" given most of those higher-earning people are making their higher earnings off of the backs of others who are working for less. That's no rant, it's cold, hard facts. Calling it a "rant" is entirely a you problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With the U.S. government pushing austerity measures, all my EU and UK friends chuckle because austerity did nothing for them.

Raise taxes on the rich.

Mainly the UK tried it the last 15 years but was dealing with all that unemployment from their Tier 3 uni systems plus had slow growth, no sector drivers, not much senior talent to deploy to private or public companies, and high VAT, income and death taxes. Then brexit so there went that labor pool and customer base.

US is attempting to self correct bloat and low productivity. Plus force a Made in America manufacturing and buying theme via tariffs.

It will be interesting to watch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please show the math on how you would balance the US budget by only taxing the rich, with zero cuts to spending.

Hint: you can't. There aren't enough rich people.

Taxing rich people and corporations would allow us to catch up to the first world in social services.

Trump has done the opposite, he’s taking money from normal Americans to give to the rich and corporations while blatantly illegally enriching himself.

Wrong.

They do it with the 18% VAT sales tax on consumption.

And made the cost of a hire 1.5x as costly for a similar level employee as here due to employer taxes and employee “benefits.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 2022 Massachusetts raised taxes on millionaires by 4%, and conservatives said the rich would flee. Instead, the state saw a 39% increase in the number of millionaires. The state passed universal free breakfast and lunch for all public school children. It is now one of the least poverty-stricken states in the country. NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani proposed raising taxes on the rich by 2%.

Millionaires like someone has over $1-2 m saved for retirement ?

Does it matter? Someone with a million in retirement is not going to be a drain on the system.

The tax type and mechanism absolutely matters when taxing wealth versus annual ordinary income flow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxing "the rich" accomplishes little, leaving aside the morality of unilaterally taking money from people who are successful to redistribute it to those who are not, and calling that "fair". Countries with high levels of taxation have uniformly lower standards of living along with their more expansive social services - everybody gets to live in a small house or apartment, drive a small car, have small appliances, and have little disposable income. In return, they receive socialized medicine which, by all reports, is better than nothing but not necessarily by much, especially if you need timely or sophisticated care.

Different models and different outcomes. Not everyone wants to live like a typical Swede or Englishman but would prefer instead the opportunity for a better lifestyle, even if that is not guaranteed in a free market economy.

You seem ok with children going hungry so billionaires get a tax break. You are what is wrong with America.

No child is hungry because someone developed a successful product or service and thereby became wealthy. Dependence on the government to feed one's children reveals more about the parents of such children than it does about people who have been successful and who don't depend on the government to keep them fed.

Agree.

Who has multiple children when they continually cannot even feed one of them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Austerity very much does work!!! It's been done several times over the years in multiple countries, but it needs to be done right. The USA is not doing anything of the sort. It's paying the rich with money from the poor. A Reverse Robin Hood.

Austerity measures work to right the national ship when economists guide the process, usually under pressure from the World Bank/IMF or in the case of Greece or other such EU countries, the European Union.

Don't confuse "austerity measures" as announced by various governments, when really they're anything but, and real economic processes to get debt under control, corruption reduced and government finances healthy again. It's VERY painful to live in a country that is undergoing an austerity practice. The average individual will not notice any gains, just pain. The nation will benefit after several years, and the gains will be mathematically measurable, but it's a process that can take a long time.

Maybe you were thinking about autarky? Yeah, that one never works. We're a global economy, for better or worse.

Hold the phone there. Greece's recovery wasn't entirely "austerity" - a big part of it was tax enforcement, creating non-political tax agency and going after rampant tax evasion with digital tax filing and stricter oversight, which greatly improved revenue. They also received billions in bailouts from the EU.

They solved some problems with hiring and firing and labor practices, and consolidated fragmented pension and retirement systems. They invested in broadband and other things to spur business and help markets, along with incentivizing Greeks abroad to return to stem the brain drain. They also did a lot to try and spur more tourism and other things.

The problem is that Republicans are anti-government-investment, and refuse to even look at doing anything on the revenue side other than to cut taxes, especially for the richest. They are not pragmatic or realistic and are openly hostile to education and educated, higher-earning professionals in the workforce, they are hostile to foreigners, which risks putting a damper on tourism, and so on.

PP you replied to. Yes, you are correct, and I agree with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxing "the rich" accomplishes little, leaving aside the morality of unilaterally taking money from people who are successful to redistribute it to those who are not, and calling that "fair". Countries with high levels of taxation have uniformly lower standards of living along with their more expansive social services - everybody gets to live in a small house or apartment, drive a small car, have small appliances, and have little disposable income. In return, they receive socialized medicine which, by all reports, is better than nothing but not necessarily by much, especially if you need timely or sophisticated care.

Different models and different outcomes. Not everyone wants to live like a typical Swede or Englishman but would prefer instead the opportunity for a better lifestyle, even if that is not guaranteed in a free market economy.

You seem ok with children going hungry so billionaires get a tax break. You are what is wrong with America.

No child is hungry because someone developed a successful product or service and thereby became wealthy. Dependence on the government to feed one's children reveals more about the parents of such children than it does about people who have been successful and who don't depend on the government to keep them fed.

Agree.

Who has multiple children when they continually cannot even feed one of them?

Women whose birth control fails, women who can’t get abortions when they find out they’re 10 weeks pregnant, women stuck with children from deadbeat dads.

Oh, and people who define their quality of life differently from you. If they arent living in a Langley HS pyramid can they afford to have children by your definition? What about the federal employees who built their lives around serving the public for crap pay that were fired, can they ”afford” to withstand this sh*tshow of an administration and the economic and political instability being created? Or is that par for the course?

You may have money, but your thinking reflects a poverty mindset.

[Anonymous]

Can someone post that Hayek Keynes rap video?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
DP. We know balancing the budget doesn’t work by giving them tax breaks.

The last time we had a balanced budget and indeed a surplus, it was after they passed a capital gains tax cut.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post that Hayek Keynes rap video?

This 2010 hit—created by John Papola and economist Russ Roberts—depicts Keynes (Billy Scafuri) and Hayek (Adam Lustick) in a playful yet rigorous rap “battle” over boom-and-bust economic cycles. The original:

The official sequel (released April 2011) revisits the debate in the context of the Great Recession, exploring stimulus versus free‑market responses:

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Taxing "the rich" accomplishes little, leaving aside the morality of unilaterally taking money from people who are successful to redistribute it to those who are not, and calling that "fair". Countries with high levels of taxation have uniformly lower standards of living along with their more expansive social services - everybody gets to live in a small house or apartment, drive a small car, have small appliances, and have little disposable income. In return, they receive socialized medicine which, by all reports, is better than nothing but not necessarily by much, especially if you need timely or sophisticated care.

Different models and different outcomes. Not everyone wants to live like a typical Swede or Englishman but would prefer instead the opportunity for a better lifestyle, even if that is not guaranteed in a free market economy.

You seem ok with children going hungry so billionaires get a tax break. You are what is wrong with America.

No child is hungry because someone developed a successful product or service and thereby became wealthy. Dependence on the government to feed one's children reveals more about the parents of such children than it does about people who have been successful and who don't depend on the government to keep them fed.

Agree.

Who has multiple children when they continually cannot even feed one of them?

Actually the answer in all sociology classes and studies is that the un/underemployed single woman “wants to feel needed” so has a baby with a non-spouse. And then another. And another.
The fatherless welfare children are then “raised” by the maternal grandmother or aunt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can someone post that Hayek Keynes rap video?

This 2010 hit—created by John Papola and economist Russ Roberts—depicts Keynes (Billy Scafuri) and Hayek (Adam Lustick) in a playful yet rigorous rap “battle” over boom-and-bust economic cycles. The original:

The official sequel (released April 2011) revisits the debate in the context of the Great Recession, exploring stimulus versus free‑market responses:

Government Spending
Keynes’ View: Stimulate demand via fiscal policy (spend more!)
Hayek’s View: Leads to misallocation; distorts natural cycles

Recessions
Keynes’ View: Result from a lack of demand
Hayek’s View: Result from prior malinvestments (bad credit)

Markets
Keynes’ View: Can fail without intervention
Hayek’s View: Self-correcting if left alone

Boom-Bust Cycles
Keynes’ View: Need smoothing via central policy
Hayek’s View: Booms are the problem, not just the busts

Role of Government
Keynes’ View: Active—“in the driver’s seat”
Hayek’s View: Passive—“humble and limited”