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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So many things have gotten so much worse.  Shrinkflation and skimpflation.  Customer service being replaced by AI that sends you in endless loops and never solves the problem.  Endless subscriptions and paywalls.  Climate change, global instability, and constant supply chain disruptions causing shortages. Younger people increasingly accept that it’s normal to pay the same price and receive less and less, because they don’t remember what things were like before.

Regardless of the fact that our living standards are still better than a 14th century peasant (for now, until the billionaires have their way), we’ve lost something very vital: optimism. People used to look forward to the future. [b]For a moment after WWII, it seemed like things were possible.[/b]  Rights were expanding, schools were desegregating, opportunities were opening up for more and more people, and the moral arc of the universe was bending (slowly) in the right direction.  The middle class was expanding.  Flying cars were just around the corner.  Families could get by comfortably on one income.  A college education unlocked doors.  Kids could just be kids without having to grind year round at sports just to make the high school team.  Minority groups started to see themselves represented on TV and in the movies.  Workers could get together and demand better conditions.  Journalists did their job and reported instead of fawning.  We weren’t being constantly surveilled by smart technology.

Greedy rich people, religious leaders, and racists all concluded that this was a bad thing, joined forces, and now here we are, being driven off the cliff by people who very much do not have your best interests at heart.[/quote]

This is an important misunderstanding of history. America’s post WWII economic dominance which afforded us so much was always going to be temporary. America raced out ahead of the world after the war because much of the industrial base of the world was destroyed.  We won because nobody else could compete, not because rod the superiority of our model.

As countries rebuilt their economic bases, they slowly eroded our economic dominance. Slowly at first but then all at once. We helped squander that lead, but it was always going to come to an end. A simple and understandable example is the Japanese automakers eventually outcompeting and destroying the model that made labor unions so powerful and important in the USA after WWII.

A lot of tiger things contributed to the decline, from both the Democrats and Republicans,[b] but the post WII American economy was always going to be a temporary thing.[/b] [/quote]

You’re talking about economic superiority which is just one aspect of what PP was talking about. We didn’t need to cut education and infrastructure spending and export jobs like we did. We didn’t need to allow corporate interests to take over our government.[/quote]

What do you think pays for the education and infrastructure spending?  The economy!  The two are linked and the inevitable end of American economic dominance was always going to be felt in everything else about American society.

Wealth hoarding is a problem, but it is not *the* problem. In 1970 Social Security and Medicare spending amounted  to just under 4% of GDP (or about 20% of the federal budget). Today it is around 9% of GDP (or almost 40% of the federal budget).  That is a delta of about $1.5 trillion per year in incremental spending over 1970.

If you make the extremely aggressive assumption that you can achieve 100% tax efficiency and taxed all the wealth of American billionaires, you would collect about $8.5 trillion, or just about 5.5 years of the incremental spend on Social Security and Medicare(again, this is just 20% of the federal budget).  See the problem?  The math here is just absolutely brutal.

And while it is easy to blame this on billionaires and greed, it is clear the fix won’t be from taxing them. I think there are good policy reasons for these proposed taxes, but it isn’t going to fix what politicians are promising it will fix.

Note: I don’t mean to suggest social security or Medicare are *the* problem or any other specific issue. We have an aggregate spending problem that cannot be solved with additional revenue.

A 100% wealth tax would crash asset values and the collections from such a tax would be a fraction of curren wealth values so the money would be a much smaller amount that would actually only pay for fewer years worth of expenditures.[/quote]

The thing is our government revenue problem was mostly self inflicted.  The math here is brutal we spend half of our taxes on interest.  These don't go towards services.  They go into bond holders bank accounts.

This is just fiscal mismanagement.  Frankly those that have the most access to lawmakers are the most responsible for this situation.  So even if such wealth taxes are merely punitive.  There is some value in punishing those that have so poorly managed the finances.

Though having said that.  Taxing wealth directly has some economic upsides.  It doesn't punish capitalists for producing goods efficiently in the way of profits.  It would ensure that the wealthy keep their assets gainfully employed.  If their assets are producing profits then they will evaporate, which I am fine with.  You don't get to have a massive company that drives every other out of business then just milk the monopoly cow 1% profit or whatever.  [/quote]

This is partially correct. Revenue since 1970 has hovered around 15-20% of GDP.  We are currently at a relative low on the bottom end of that range.

A huge part of the problem has been that when times have been flush we have expended spending rather than cleaning up the balance sheet.  This is also observed at the local level where blue states are struggling with spending they expanded during COVID.

Frankly, it is one of the reasons I am anti tax raising. Raising taxes to clean up the mess would be great. But guys like Bernie Sanders are proposing higher taxes and expanded entitlements.  Will only make the problem worse in the long run.

I don’t quite understand your last paragraph. [/quote]

NP - you are correct. We also shouldn't forget two forever wars, largely of choice.

I'm hoping at some point we can start having a real conversation about our defense spending. The Pentagon can't pass an audit. Their budget should stay static and be reduced by 5% a year until they can.[/quote]

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