comment: >
  
  Was it because trump raised the national debt by trillions and over stimulated the economy?
context: Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it. Donnie literally used this as a re-election talking point and said he’s make em permanent as a way to buy votes but well hurr hurr Biden pelosi hurr hurr >
  
  
  Dude I can scream this shit till my face is blue and they deny it.
  
  I mean I still can't get the republicans in my life to understand progressive taxation. They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket... For a group of people who like to waste so much air moralizing about fiscal responsibility and chiding other for how they spend their money, they don't know shit about any of it. >
  
  
  They are still convinced that they can make less money if they barely cross over the threshold of a new tax bracket..
  
  My god yes, this is infuriating to me. >
  
  Never get angry because people were never taught something.
  Be angry it isn't taught. >
  
  Thanks, I agree. These are good words to live by. 
  I do get frustrated though when I have to teach them about progressive taxation every time they bring it up yet forget by their next paycheck. >
  
  Of course, to borrow from you, it's infuriating. You are forced "to drag" along "the confused" every day like Sisyphus. Similar to the "No Child Left Behind"?
  The poorly educated are easy to control, to manipulate, to swindle.
  How do we handle the better educated? How do we keep them under control?
  One way is by making them responsible for the poorly educated. They are then too busy to see how they too are getting swindled, just differently. Wearing multiple hats at a job? Another way of getting the work of many but only paying for one.
  I like paying my taxes, because I hate living with uneducated people.
  Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  
  And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
  
  You don't need high intelligence, or way above normal intelligence. The screaming radios are in all our ears via controlled media, social media, our leaders, and our work places. We will not make progress forward until a solution is put in place. >
  
  I'm all for universal Healthcare, universal education, universal child care, and universal basic income... Because it will mean I need to interact with fewer shit people. >
  
  The real crime here, which nobody talks about, is that the trump tax cuts were deficit spending, meaning the US borrowed the money and added to the deficit. That means the rich got the tax breaks and now the tax payers have to pay off the loan. It's the largest transfer of wealth in history and no one seems to realize they've just been robed. >
  
  Almost all of our fiscal policy since the 70’s has been a wealth transfer. Today, I think the largest robbery is happening on Wall-Street, who are fueling their “infinite-growth” with workers wages, and by destroying companies for short term-profit, which is likely who bought the tax cuts from Trump…I mean “lobbied” for them. >
  
  Look, man. No one said the trickle down was gonna me immediate. Give it another couple generations, and we will all be swimming in the flood…they promise. >
  
  In the late 1800's, the supply-side model was called "Horse and Sparrow" economics, on the theory that if one feeds the horses enough oats, eventually there will be something left behind for the sparrows.  The 1896 panic is the result of this model. 
  Hoover's belief in the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads to fight the Great Depression lead to Will Rogers to be the first to use "trickle down".
  
  They didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.
  
  
  Nationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932)
  
  Then came Reaganomics, a model based on the principles of supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory.  George H. W. Bush coined the term "voodoo economics" as a proposed synonym for Reaganomics before he became Reagan's VP.
  The GOP keeps parading this old pig out each time they can with just a different color of lipstick in the hope that the US citizens will think it is great new economic policy.  Unfortunately, do believe it to be so. >
  
  The problem is that the rich build dams to build their wealth and the trickle down river runs low. Now that river is almost dry and the dam is overflowing, so they just build another dam. >
  
  While having taxpayers pay for the dam. >
  
  While having everyone pay through inflation which barely affects the wealthy. >
  
  The Republican playbook is to run up the bill as much as possible when in power and then complain that the Democrats don’t do enough to reduce it.
  Edit: everyone trying to , “both sides,” this ate paste in school. >
  
  They were blaming Biden for the runaway debt before he even took the oath. >
  
  Very true.  But the problem is this:
  How many people read Axios?
  How many people get their news from Fox "News"?
  They were called out for it, but nobody knows.  Unfortunately. >
  
  I dont need to read something to confirm what I have seen going on before my very eyes for the last...what 30 years? >
  
  40 years. Since Reagan. >
  
  And when Clinton actually balanced the budget — supposedly the conservative holy grail — literally every republican in congress voted against it. Then they campaigned against it in the next election and the first thing they did after winning back the house was make limbaugh an honorary member of congress because they only care about power, not governing.
  Lucky for maga, the so-called liberal media doesn't think its their job to remind the voters of their history.  Instead, its like each day the slate is wiped clean. >
  
  Wouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.
  Mainstream journalism, especially the televised variety, has been little more than a senstionalised he said/she said for decades now. Looking at you, Crossfire* and other "news debate" shows. Journalism is not a debate, it's a time-honored craft with rules and conventions. None of those rules is meant to include making sure both sides of every debate get equal screen time, no matter how nutty or demonstrably false.
  *Typo >
  
  
  Wouldn't want to be accused of media bias, so surely the thing to do is frame every single issue as a balanced debate, even when one side is playing the game in bad faith.
  
  And at the end of the day, treating two unequal things as if they are equal is itself a form of bias.  But its a bias that people don't usually throw tantrums over, so its safe. >
  
  Based on my countless hours of watching Fox News I can safely say it's a combination of all the DOJ witch hunts on Trump and laptop repair bills for Hunter Biden. >
  
  And wokeness. And CRT and electric stoves and Xboxes and M&Ms. But mostly the wokeness. >
  
  Are Xboxes "woke" or whatever the fuck, now? >
  
  Wow. >
  
  Republicans aren't going to tell American the real cause of anything. Republicans are never going to tell the truth, but they're also really bad at concealing that truth. They are a grift enterprise, full stop. The modern Republican party exists to funnel wealth upward, to exacerbate the worst exploitative tendencies of capitalism. And as a natural end product of that naked greed, they have embraced full-on nationalism/fascism, and play to the worst instincts of the worst people, all in service to greed. So yeah, anyone who doesn't know that by this point has really not been paying attention. >
  
  Democrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality.  They are left if the center/center and not this progressive, leftist conspiracy FOX News peddles.  The GOP and their ultra rich 1% donors exploit the denial their constituents exist in.  They know they’re tired and upset because their lives and the world didn’t turn out threat they thought it would and they need to blame someone and have an outlet for their misery.  This why they flock to FOX News… misery loves company and those who will have a pity party with them. >
  
  
  Democrats aren’t going to tell Americans, either, but they are at least more middle of the road about it and live in SOME kind of reality
  
  I mean, there are some shitty Dems too (both sides), but you can see Dems cannibalize one another, whereas republicans just double down and defend each other. >
  
  The people who get trillions in government subsidies pay extremely low effective tax rates because the system is built to make everything they do tax deductible. 
  The US is built for corporations, not for Americans. >
  
  It has not always been this way. The top tax bracket rate was over 90% in the 40s and 50s. 
  The enormous shift we've seen has happened since then, got a rapid increase with Reagan, and then a turbo boost in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling. >
  
  Republicans wanted to “make america great again” but were either too dumb to recognize or not willing to admit that the middle class boomed in the 50’s because of such a high rate >
  
  That isn't really what they mean when they say "great America". They mean white, and male, and conservative, and Christian. Also, none of them were alive during the time they idolize, and they're yearning for something that never existed. >
  
  I know that’s what they mean. I was trying to give the most charitable interpretation possible-in which they are still wrong and bat shit crazy >
  
  Clinton gave us a surplus and Bush fucked that up. Ever since then Republicans have been worse for the debt. Democrats tend to spend on investments to the country that give a good return. Republicans jand out money to their wealthy donors which bring little back or negative returns.
  Republicans are a disaster for our debt. Look how much they fucked it up when they had total control. >
  
  They were worse for debt before Dubya. Reagan blew it up doing his shit. >
  
  Fun fact, Reagan also ballooned the budget and deficit of California during his stint as governor. He ran on eliminating wasteful government programs and cutting spending, and ended his term with the highest increase in both budget and deficit in California's history up to that point. All he ended up doing was defunding the CSU/UC systems (bad move that hurt the state) and shutting down state mental health facilities (really bad move that hurt the state).
  It's safe to say, Reagan did nothing good for anyone ever. Being that's a universal statement, I'd be interested if there was anything good that came from that man's existence, but I'm doubtful. >
  
  Faux middle class economic explosion, as with other GOP presidents after him.
  Pattern has been the same for 50 years- stock market booms, companies go on a manic spree, credit expands drastically, people feel rich...then it all implodes disastrously 4 to 8 years later. >
  
  Shit, isn't that what happened in the 1920s? >
  
  republicon platform:
  Never have any solutions only complaints and criticism.
  Block anything and everything the Democrats try to do.
  Never take responsibility for anything bad, even if you caused it.
  Do everything possible to make a situation worse and then blame it on the Democrats.
  Take credit for anything good, even if you had nothing to do with it. >
  
  And lie through your teeth, and cheat/steal/corrupt your way to winning elections. >
  
  The founding fathers: no taxation without representation.
  Now the people not paying taxes get all the representation. Collectively, we're all paying for their good time. >
  
  Can someone explain to me simply why the national debt matters? >
  
  The issue is not with the debt itself but rather the interest on that debt. Tax money going toward interest payments is money not being spent on government services. So if you keep increasing the national debt year over year via deficit spending, then each year a higher percentage of tax revenues has to be spent on interest payments, thus lowering the percentage spent on government services. 
  Trillions of dollars of national debt means billions of dollars in interest payments. I think we can all agree that it would be better to use those billions of dollars to fund essential government services. >
  
  What if the government just... didn't pay the interest?  Somebody going to arrest them or something? >
  
  That would be defaulting on our debt. The two issues with that are:
  1) The 14th amendment expressly states that the US must pay it's obligations (aka debt payments)
  2) It would hurt the countries credit rating (the same way people have credit scores) and any future borrowing (which we have to do since we run a deficit) would be at a higher interest rate. >
  
  Everything you need to know about the intersection of economics and politics can be summarized by the situation that Obama recovering from the 2008 crisis to reach a record high economy is characterized as a failing/destroyed economy by the GOP, while the record economy under Trump is characterized as incredible and never before seen. It’s a tribalistic fugazi. >
  
  Yeah this always was so absurd. Somehow the economy was on fire in 2016 yet roaring just a year later with no change. The media helped this so much >
  
  Anecdotally, in 2016, I explained to my father, a Fox News junkie, that when Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sat around 8,000. Despite all his parroted claims that Obama was destroying America, including the economy, which only Trump could save, the Dow was sitting at over 16,000, the highest it had ever reached, upon Obama’s departure in 2017.
  I pulled up market statistics, simple graphs from any reputable news outlet, etc. He literally said he didn’t believe it, didn’t care, there’s no “!@#$ing way” a socialist like Obama did any good for the economy or America. >
  
  The dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.
  They’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
  It’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!
  When they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).
  Then when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.
  Not only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.
  This backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.
  A half century ago, American’s wealthy helped finance the federal government mainly through their tax payments.
  Tax rates on the wealthy were high. Under Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, they were over 90%. Even after all tax deductions, the wealthy typically paid half of their incomes in taxes.
  Since then – courtesy of tax cuts under Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, and Donald Trump – the effective tax rate on wealthy Americans has plummeted.
  Not only has their income tax rate dropped but other taxes that hit them hardest, such as the corporate tax, have also declined.
  Even as the rich have accumulated unprecedented wealth, they are now paying a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.
  Trump’s 2017 tax cut – largely a handout to the rich – helped push the tax rate on the 400 wealthiest households below the rates for almost everyone else.
  By 2018, the 400 wealthiest American households paid a lower total tax rate – including federal, state, and local taxes – than any other income group. Their overall tax rate was only 23%. It had been 70% in 1950.
  Middle-class and poor families didn’t benefit from the drop in income and corporate taxes. They now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than previously, so their overall taxes have remained fairly flat.
  One of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on corporations and wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue.
  In the first full year of the Trump tax cut, the federal budget deficit increased by $113bn while corporate tax receipts fell by about $90bn, which would account for nearly 80% of the deficit increase.
  Meanwhile, America’s wealthy have been financing America’s exploding debt by lending the federal government money, for which the government pays them interest.
  As the federal debt continues to mount, these interest payments are ballooning – hitting a record $475bn in the last fiscal next year (which ran through September). The Congressional Budget Office predicts that interest payments on the federal debt will reach 3.3% of the GDP by 2032 and 7.2% by 2052.
  The biggest recipients of these interest payments? Not foreigners but wealthy Americans who park their savings in treasury bonds held by mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, banks, insurance companies, personal trusts and estates.
  Hence the giant half-century switch: the wealthy used to pay higher taxes to the government. Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.
  This means that a growing portion of everyone else’s taxes are going to wealthy Americans in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services that everyone needs.
  So, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.
  Both are worsening America’s already staggering inequalities of income and wealth.
  What should be done? Isn’t it obvious? Raise taxes on the wealthy. >
  
  No no no, see if you tax wealthy people then how does that benefit wealthy people? >
  
  It's easy if you aren't being lied to.  Bush tax cuts of the 00s (which destroyed the budget SURPLUS that Clinton left office with), followed by a financial crisis and TARP, followed by the Trump tax cuts, followed by a pandemic.  All of these things combined to create a huge cost to the US that manifested as national debt.  The important detail here is that two of these four situations were not caused by the government at all (but required huge governmental intervention) while the other two were directly caused by Republican actions. >
  
  Bush jr tax cuts plus Iraq/afghan war combined with bailouts in 08, combined with trump tax cuts >
  
  Truth won’t feed the GOP outrage machine or fit into the narrative of evil liberals. >
  
  All while the GOP bottlenecks and kneecaps any attempt of Democrats to make any progress. Democrats trying to make programs that invest in Americans, so we can get a return on that investment... Yet the GOP blocks all attempts at the expense of democracy and the general population all so they can point out how crappy of a job the Democrats performed come next election. >
  
  Yes, yes thats all true... but hear me out just a second, i got three words for you: Trickle Down Economics >
  
  We all taste the piss. >
  
  One missing piece from the Guardian story, which focus on rich and corporations no longer paying taxes, is what the taxes are spent on.
  70% of the US debt is from the unfunded military spending because 70% of US spending in discretionary budget is military spending.  SS/Medicare are self funded, have a $1T surplus and have not contributed anything to US debt.
  The result has been near constant war by US since the 1980's when the tax cuts for rich and gross overspending on US military began, aka Reaganomics.
  There's a maxim that countries that build offensive military capability have to either use it or cut back, US has used it.    We see continued new wars being advocated to justify more spending.  The latest being war with China which spends 60% less than US on military and that in response to US military bases on China's borders.
  US has 700 overseas military bases.
  US has 18 aircraft carriers to Russia/China combined 4.
  US has waged war of occupation in the Middle East for 30 years with the buildup to that war starting in 1980, Reaganomics.
  As we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.
  US military spending is $1.2T per year counting Pentagon and other military spending from Dept of Energy to NASA to CIA/NSA to even VA.
  Cut US military spending 50% to $500B vs. Russia and China combined $350B.  Restore income tax to the Trump, Bezos, Musks, Exxons, Amazons et al and US pays off the debt the rich and the military created. >
  
  
  As we see in Ukraine, US after all that spending, does not have enough basic military supplies for Ukraine to fight Russia.
  
  This is inaccurate. We do have enough supplies, we choose not to send everything Ukraine needs to push Russia back. >
  
  Nah, commenter was talking out his ass.
  Congress buying tanks the Army doesn't need is defense industrial policy; it's cheaper to buy tanks the Army doesn't need, and keep the production line going at bare-minimum rate, than it is to shut down the line and then open it back up again in a few years when you need tanks again.  Especially if it's wartime and you need a lot of tanks in a hurry; it's faster and cheaper to add a second and third shift to the factories than it is to spin up one shift from scratch. >
  
  A lot of words to say that the tanks are made in gym Jordan’s district and he ain’t passin on no pork >
  
  
  Cut Taxes for the rich, which will dry up a large chunk of tax revenue for the government. This massively balloons the deficit.
  Complain there is no money and we have to make big cuts. First things cut will be programs that help average people.
  Tell your dumb voter base this is all the 'lefts' fault. They then vote for the knife in their own back. >
  
  
  Pass "budget neutral" tax cuts by creating expiration dates on the legislation and then accusing the democrats of raising taxes if they let the tax cuts expire. >
  
  
  Now the government pays the wealthy interest on their loans to finance a swelling debt that’s been caused largely by lower taxes on the wealthy.
  
  That's a good observation. >
  
  It’s tax cuts for the rich. The moment we lose our international hegemony, we will be screwed and republicans are taking us down that road >
  
  They've been gutting our economy since Reagan. The data, the numbers etc are out there for anyone to read. >
  
  
  Their overall tax rate was only 23%.
  
  This part really grinds my gears.
  My wife and I just finished putting all of our taxes together. Our effective tax rate is calculated at 24%. We actually ended up owing about $600 even though we've had our employers set to take extra out. The middle class is just royally fucked by a lack of tax handouts while the class that needs them the least is swimming in them. >
  
  “The rich used to pay taxes. Now they loan money to the US government – at a profit that everyone else pays for” - linked article >
  
  "...and neither will our headline." >
  
  I remember being in school and the debt was 3T at that time and teachers lamenting that we’d never pay it off.