Bill Clinton reduced national debt by taxing the wealthy more and cutting wealfare and military spending
If We want to avoid going bankrupt (our debt is $38.4 trillion while we only collect $5.23 trillion a year in taxes) we can increase taxes on the wealthy and cut wealfare and military spending
Capitalism over Socialism!
Posted by Hokkaido_Japanese445
29 Comments
Is this bait?
I am all for increasing taxes.
After the federal government drastically cuts spending and proves it can be efficient with our tax dollars to directly help our citizens.
I guess you’re newbie in libertarianism.
,, Tax the rich ” means tax everyone.
Rich will simple either increase prices on their products either leave .
If they leave , you won’t get your taxes , but because you need tax revenue , you will lower the amount of money for peoples to be considering rich .
And in the end , you will tax everyone.
Bill Clinton reduced the national debt because he rode the dot com bubble and the massive surpluses that came with it.
Decrease spending by 90% and decrease taxes by 80% and it’ll get paid off eventually
> Bill Clinton reduced national debt by taxing the wealthy more and cutting wealfare and military spending
What year did the national debt go down? According to [treasury.gov](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/historical-debt-outstanding/historical-debt-outstanding) the outstanding debt increased every year of Clinton’s term.
The surpluses claimed by the Clinton administration were an accounting trick that would be criminal if corporations did it.
I’d argue that an increase in economic freedom and budget cuts that could help achieve a budget surplus would work much better.
The wealthy don’t pay taxes. Man, it’s getting so tiring.
I’m not going to explain the Laffer curve. Others have done it better than I could hope. Higher taxes means diminishing returns.
Absolutely spending should be reduced. Technocrats and politicos are ***extremely*** bad at making economic decisions. And moral decisions. And almost any decision really. *For The Greater Good* means most people will get screwed over for the benefit of a few.
A lot on this sub obviously will not like it, but in addition to significant expense cuts the government has a revenue problem. There is no realistic possibility of cutting enough expense to pay down the debt.
I’m a huge proponent of a simplified tax code and national sales tax. Those two things will result in the wealthy paying a stronger share.
The issue isn’t necessarily that the rich need to pay a higher percentage, they just need less loop holes and tax incentives. I don’t think most people realize how powerful things like bonus depreciation are and how many asset holders avoid paying tax bills for years
Fuck you. Cut spending.
In the USA the taxes are already maxed out. Increasing taxation to pay down debt really isn’t a option.
The sort of math you see on reddit and other places were people “demonstrate” how increasing this or that tax against the wealthy can be used to pay for things like socialized medicine or pay for debt are really just demonstrations of people being incredibly economically illiterate. Just because the math works out on paper doesn’t mean it actually will work.
There is a economic phenomena called “The Laffer Curve”. It is meant to demonstrate the relationship between tax rates versus tax receipts (actual money received through taxes).
It isn’t a 1:1 relationship.
Basically: if a 30% tax rate gets the state 1 trillion dollars then it is irrational to assume that a 60% tax rates gets the state 2 trillion dollars. That isn’t how economics works.
You _might_ get 2 trillion dollars. But it is unlikely. You might also get 1.7 or 1.5 or even 1.2 trillion dollars.
It is also possible **to get less**. Meaning going from 30% to 60% might only get you .8 trillion dollars.
It all depends on how the economy reacts to increased taxation.
Taxes are a drag on the economy. They extract wealth from society by first seizing the money under force then using that money to then purchase goods and services from the population. The centralized state is, in effect, in competition with the public.
The more the state has, the less the public has.
And the economy depends on investment and growth to be sustainable. Food gets eaten, buildings need repair, machines wear down, people retire, new people need to be trained and gain expertise. Which means society relies on a constant renewal and reinvestment. Only a relative small portion of this, called profits and savings, is available to grow the economy and invest in improvements.
When the government seizes and redirects profits and savings through taxation and inflation then they are undermining the economy itself. They are destroying society’s ability to improve itself and pay for things.
———————————–
Right now the Federal government’s tax receipts is stuck at around 17% of national GDP since the end of WW2.
It didn’t matter what Bill Clinton did… it was still stuck at 17%. I didn’t matter that during Lyndon Johnson the top income bracket tax rate was 94%… they still got 17% of GDP.
When they lowered the tax rate down to 60% the USA Goverment still got 17% of GDP.
When, during the Reagan era, they dropped the top income tax bracket rate down to 31%…. It still got 17% of national GDP, more or less.
All of this is because the USA is effectively a max taxation. Increasing taxes only screws up the economy. It doesn’t actually increase the amount of money the government gets.
And the reason the USA Federal government is in debt is because while it collects 17% of GDP it spends 20% or more of GDP.
So how the USA gets out of debt is this:
1. Improve the economy. Which can only be done privately. Centralized state government can screw up the economy, but it can’t make it better. A healthier economy is the only way that the amount of taxation can be increased in a country like the USA.
2. Reduce spending. The Federal government must spend less then it is taking in.
That is it. That is how it works in the real world.
I Really just wanted a discussion, not a war
If the government reduces spending first, then we can start to talk about raising taxes.
If we’re on a donkey ride to hell either way, I’d like to keep my money for as long as possible
lol, government will never correct itself except through a giant collapse. just embrace had assets and crypto and stop trying to fix a government you have absolutely no control over. P.S. Bill Clintons charade still added massive debt. Dont let his numbers fool you
you mean the Federalist Party that Jefferson killed off and got his way
someone just DM’ed me and told me to kill my self
Higher taxes do not equal higher government revenue. In reality, higher taxes slow the economy, which overall *reduces* revenue. This is why you can’t tax your way to prosperity. There is a sweet spot that optimizes the government revenue while keeping a thriving economy, and that should be the goal. However, since the real goal of politicians is to help their friends and punish their enemies, it’ll never happen.
America doesn’t pay debt. We use inflation to make it less valuable.
You are mistaken.
It *cant* be done.
That ship sailed long ago.
It’s literally not the only way. The correct way to deal with a government borrowing ridiculous amounts of money is to repudiate the debt, just stop paying on it and refuse to pay any more. Make the lenders eat it.
No one will loan money to that government again for a generation, and that’s an ideal outcome.
The goal of decreasing the size of government is to move towards the end of coercive taxation. While I understand where you’re coming from, we can not concede any increase in taxation, as doing so would be a violation of our founding principle, the NAP.
Why are taxes collected at all if they’re just printing infinite money? Why print ANY money if you could raise taxes to balance the budget? If you liquidated EVERY CENT of all the wealthy people’s property and seized ALL of it, you could run the government for a few months, and not even touch the debt. I think they like it this way and not only will it never get better, it will continue to get far far worse. Look at places that have begun to tax the wealthy at higher rates, New York and California. People either flee, or find loopholes, or both.
No politician wants to tackle ever increasing “entitlement spending”.
We just need cuts. We don’t need more taxes.
Here is the federal budget breakdown:
– Medicare/Health: 28%
– Social Security: 25%
– Military/Defense: 16%
There’s bigger fish than military spending. Let’s prioritize, yeah?
Wrong. Clinton “balanced the budget” because he was forced to work with Newt and the Republicans, and you had explosive growth of the internet that was largely unregulated and a whole new sector.
He implemented welfare reform that had work requirements and the government was basically a lot less intrusive back then.
He did a few things that also created bubbles in the economy which eventually popped like the housing crisis that forced banks to give out risky loans.
Join our conversation anyone can be involved we are trying to make real changes happen.
https://m.me/j/AbZKalFIy9LynZSx/
Start with reducing spending, which is politically impossible. We have a massive spending problem.