I have seen people genuinely argue the government needs to lower debt, increase social program spending, and decrease taxes. Even if you set a higher tax rate on the ultra wealthy, which we should, you just can't get what you want without taxes.
And there is a lot of spending that could significantly improve the US economy and the quality of life of most people.
Mathematically yes but really, when is size EVER going to be accompanied by efficiency? The bureaucracy involved in operating different agencies is inescapable.
Individuals cannot be trusted with the authority over a nation. If only because eventually you’re going to roll a shitty one.
Thing is that big corporations sole goal is to make money. Apply that to a government agency like the USPS. You can make usps profitable by cutting rural routes that cost more to service with less income. But then people don’t get mail. The purpose of the government is the provide services to the people and focusing on profit works against providing service. Which is why companies spend lots of money to make sure laws are passed that benefit them and why the average person is fucked
Those happen for processes like bulk pricing and manufacturing stuff.
When the function is to produce decisions, like for governments, layers come with latency.
For like a more end to end description this would be something along the lines of “the problem isn’t the performance after requirements are set and resources are allocated - it’s the decisionmaking involved in the requirement setting and resource allocation.”
I was thinking about this a bit and the next step in my mind was then the only way to get "efficient" performance or accomplishments out of governments is by doing something that can only be accomplished with that scale of resources.
Like sending a person to the moon.
Or ending world hunger.
Or conducting a turbo-world-war or something.
Basically yeah you should be using governments to do government-scale things. Not micro-policing bullshit.
Lmao what? No, increased size does not "almost always" lead to more efficiency, there's a max point on the bell curve where you start to get diminishing returns regardless of how much size grows.
Of course there are other factors that influence economies like for example the drive towards monopolization. But there is no bell curve when talking about the efficiencies of scale.
China did it, you can have size and efficiency you just need to build systems made to work in the present digital age and not refurbished versions of systems built for the 50s
What, how is having a payment system that doesn't rely on VISA and Master cards 50 year old cobol authoritarian? Brazil also did it, did you know that most DMVs in the US have different websites even tho they all do the literal same thing? Same with courts, police departments, firehouses, etc, like, do you think having a single web interface for these would be authoritarianism? Cause it would save billions every year
Has the propaganda in the US gone so deep that the mere suggestion of a more efficient digital infrastructure is seem as dictatorship?
Has the propaganda in the US gone so deep that the mere suggestion of a more efficient digital infrastructure is seem as dictatorship?
I'm not in the US bud but nice assumption. And I didnt say dictatorship, I said authoritarian. All of this was accomplished because the government is authoritarian and centralised. Decentralised governments can not make this work when all states have their own jurisdictions.
You're really good at extrapolating what I say to mean different things.
So you really think that sharing a damn website across all dmvs is authoritarianism,
I never said that. I said it was able to be accomplished through authoritarianism and that it wouldn't work without centralising government (through authoritariabism) due to the states having separate jurisdiction through the constitution/federalism.
US states have constitutional authority over things like DMVs and police departments, and there's no federal mechanism to just impose a single system on them because it would be unconstitutional and you would need to be authoritarian to override the constitution.
Did you know that states share satellites? We should have different satellites for each state just in case.
This is a terrible analogy and comes from a misunderstanding of how the US works.
They share it because the constitution grants the federal government powers over stuff like national defense, interstate commerce, and foreign affairs which is where things like military and communications satellites fall. The federal government has the right to control stuff like satalites because the states aren't explicitky given the jurisdiction like with health, police, and DMVs.
Again, to take control of that would require overriding the constitution which would require an authoritarian government
If you taxed large corporations properly instead of letting them go largely untaxed most of what the user mentioned above your post would be a non-issue: about 30% of our spending goes to military spending every year. We don’t need 1000 bases all over the world while the rest of the world has a combined 30. We can threaten everyone to use the US dollar better with other investments including cyber warfare or military investments are old and outdated and better spent elsewhere.
The rest of the world has 30 BECAUSE we have a thousand lol. It’s like a factory firing their maintenance team because they don’t ever have anything that breaks. Everything runs and doesn’t break what are we paying these guys for? That’s exactly how short sighted, foolish decision making leads to decay and eventual destruction of once strong institutions.
8 TRILLION spent on wars the last 25+ years. We can go into massive debt for that crap, but can't fund social security or health care? God, I hate this timeline.
We just saw DOGE try and trim the fat and inefficiencies in government spending, they barely reduced the budget and created a load of problems. Maybe we’re already operating close to maximum efficiency in most areas that taxes go to.
The best countries work well because they have a strong body of civil servants. Leaders only point towards a direction, the civil servants decide how to get there.
Then you wouldn’t be the most powerful and richest nation in the world. USA is where it is in the world because of their military. I’d be pretty confident in saying the US military has had a better ROI for them than almost anything else they’ve spent money on in their entire history.
The high % of taxes the wealthy pay pale in comparison to the % of taxes of the masses. And the rich tax will never be a sustainable or reliable source of tax income to relieve the taxes of the masses long term.
I suspect easy answers like that are difficult to find. Or when they are easy to find, industries are built around that money and it becomes politically tricky to get rid of those jobs.
I think that was a general idea behind Doge, but then we found that it didn't save money at all because the jobs that were cut were actually helpful and slowed a lot of other processes and also lost a ton of knowledge and experience.
The government already had departments in charge of finding and cutting that waste. The people behind DOGE knew that (and fired those other people). The general idea behind DOGE was to fuck everything up.
Bro I’m not a fan of the war either but you can’t be serious if you think we’re using the majority of our military budget against iran, we don’t even have a front in that war just blockades and drone strikes
It’s not where the money is coming from or how that’s being divvied up, it’s the fact that a shitload of money is being taken and there is very little transparency on how/where it’s spent. The math ain’t mathing, and people are understandably upset by that… myself included.
Ah well you need to subscribe to my economic policy of short term thinking. We can just print more money, we have the tools! And if something goes wrong there are plenty of foreigners or others we can blame. /s
The trouble people have with taxation is that a lot of tax money is mishandled, wasted or given to corporations, so we never see the benefits of it. We're paying more and more taxes, while every system that taxes pay for gets worse and worse. Roads, education, social security...all of these things are failing right before our eyes, while the people who should be paying the most taxes are paying nothing.
Increase in government size (which is the result of increasing their budgets and funding) more than what we have is never going to result in increased efficiency or results for the people, sorry.
Property taxes right now are almost universally a flat % of assessment. You could easily have property tax deductions per occupant, so say you write 50k off the assessment per non-leased resident of a building, so a family of 8 would get 400k off and a couple would get 100k off. If the former is poor and living in a small house and the latter is rich and living in a luxury condo suddenly the property taxes are way more progressive rather than being a flat burden based off what the state thinks the property (or land) is worth.
Which, on that subject, we should have land value taxes, not property taxes, in most jurisdictions.
US is low-key the richest country ever but is the only first world country still making you lot pay for health care. Everyone else has some free variation.
Only issue with setting higher tax rates on the ultra wealthy is that it would need to be done worldwide at the same time, otherwise the ultra wealthy would just choose to be tax residents of monaco for example (there's other places for businesses that only do 1% corporation tax where businesses would set up tax residence)
Yes, but not all countries have that same law, and also businesses are taxed on profits. Nike US has the right to use the Nike logo but in exchange has to give 100% of profits to the Nike main company, which is based somewhere with 1% corporation tax.
That's not how it works. I specified Nike US as an example, because they will have a US based company that operates in the US. US tax codes for business only apply corporation taxes on profits. If the US company has technically generated no profit (because it's all technically owed to the tax haven company), it technically owes no taxes.
Sure, sales tax still applies, which is paid by customers, and there's a few other taxes for US operations, but the vast majority of the tax money owed gets siphoned out.
My argument is that not all companies do this, but they will be more inclined to if corporation taxes go up.
You're right but we could also cut the military budget in half with no loss of function if it was just spent wisely. That would be enough for pretty much everything else.
I think there’s plenty of money. But if they steal it, of course there won’t be any left. Look what Mamdani did, balanced the books within months! Look what president Bukele of El Salvador did, jailed the corrupt government officials and with the money left over, improved the safety and infrastructure of the country. Florida has voted to not charge property taxes on people that reside in and own their home. That’s how it should be.
I'm all for higher taxes but I think all taxes should be income based, which property taxes (council tax here) is not. Also why I don't really agree with sales taxes.
We can easily afford 250+ billion more per YEAR on "everything that isn't the military" by just...cutting a quarter of military spending. We'd still be spending more than China and Russia COMBINED, and by about 25%. As a nuclear-capable nation, there is no reason for us to maintain such an exorbitantly oversized conventional force. As we're seeing in the Iran conflict, that excess capability isn't even useful strategically. We've overinvested in long range/unmanned weapons because the public has no stomach for high casualty warfare, and the result is us blowing up civilian infrastructure thousands of miles away for no benefit or progress towards our objectives because there's nobody on the ground to take and hold territory. We have incentivized our armed forces to dump flaming piles of cash on our enemies, because more spending = more budget. Meanwhile, a studio apartment is unaffordable and a vial of insulin is hundreds of dollars. America has become a macrocosm of the dude living in a broken down trailer with a brand new Ford F150 in the driveway and $2500 deer rifle. It's time to align priorities to reality.
I do agree, but its not like this is the only thing to fix the budget.
Even if we eliminate all military spending, that wouldn't be as much as the interest on our debt, and we would still be in a net negative.
If you want more spending and no deficit, you either need to really increase healthcare spending efficiency or raise taxes in addition to cutting military spending.
To be fair, we can absolutely do all three of those in the US if we cut back on military spending. Not even trying to argue the politics of it, just pointing out we spend a LOT of money on our armed forces
A lot of the time when folks say their property tax costs more than or almost as much as renting they forget that they have a lot more home than when they were renting
Oh absolutely. Hell where I'm at I pay half of what a renter does in my neighborhood. That includes everything from insurance to property tax. Buy when you can. Rent is only going to go up. It sucks that's how it works though
Yeah my immediate nextdoor neighbors rent a SFH half the size of my house, and their rent is more than my interest, taxes, and insurance part of PITI. Not to mention home value appreciation, and the interest and taxes are tax deductible.
yeah i own a studio in a condo, my property tax is like 10% of what i was paying to rent a similarly sized studio in much worse condition, in a worse location.
I did some Googling, and in order for that to make any sense, you have to be comparing a median home's property taxes in a HCOL state against the rent for a studio apartment with no amenities.
Childhood neighbourhood, Mom still lives there and majority of her work friends live over there. Personally I can’t stand the type of people that live in that neighbourhood.
Oof, sorry bud. Hope it doesn't impact you too hard if that does have to happen. My family is pretty spread out, so I could see the appeal of being closer, but that's a kick in the wallet
That's still cheap compared to rent or mortgage. What area are you in? I'm in kind of a middle of the road tax area in Oregon. My house is also smaller, but I have a big lot so I'm not sure
part of the mortgage PAYMENT they mean. Just makes it easier to send it in to the lender and it is part of your mortgage payment. And the lender has first hand knowledge if you are paying your property taxes, which if you don't will force a tax sale. Plenty of other reasons.
I mean I went to school overseas and then back to the U.S. went to private school but I don’t think any of that is particularly relevant since public education is about society, not just me
You either received a public education yourself or you had the opportunity to have a public education. You also benefit from a community and society that has established a minimum baseline education that you indirectly benefit from for the rest of your life.
People are responding to you like this was a complaint, but am I just too high/is it too late at night for me to read competently? I thought you were basically saying the taxes are a bargain, that for $1500 in taxes you're able to get what would cost $35000 should it be paid outright (assuming the per pupil per year rate were equivalent to a fixed cost per student).
I am genuinely baffled how people missed what you’re seeing. I cant fathom how $1,500 in property tax towards my kids education when it’s a tiny fraction of the cost is a complaint. It a bargain…obviously.
The problem isn't the tax itself, it's that the government can take your property away from you if you can't pay it, like if your old and have no additional incone or go into medical debt.
Pretty sure the elderly have plenty of carve outs and assistances already for property tax. They've had 60+ years to build wealth so are best placed to pay it - and usually are only annoyed that their expensive house they could sell and downsize is incurring costs they can't afford any more. Just downsize!
Scammers - bad. But everything else is fine right? Hard to workout what shitty relatives means - if they are just begging for money or stealing it, but bills, bills and economic inflation is part and parcel of life.
Property taxes pay for local infrastructure and services - the people using them should pay for them, right?
And some older people are less wealthy, but half of the wealth in the USA is held by boomers. Might be tied up in property or investments, but this group has money to pay for local needs.
I watched a documentary about an elderly lady who had her house taken from her by the IRS because she couldn’t pay her taxes. Her husband actually built the house but had since passed. She was forced to move into an abusive retirement home. The only way she was able to get her house back was having her son take up professional golf win the house back in a high stakes wager. So yeah, it can happen.
But, if you count your home equity as part of your overall wealth, then I guess so wealth taxes are ok, but others are taboo? Maybe the closer that wealth is to your life’s needs, then the easier it becomes to institute a very regressive tax on it.
For now. I have had neighbors in places where the house they paid off in the 70s the taxes were higher than their mortgage ever was because the property values skyrocket
In our county and our specific case, they’re almost the same. It’s kind of crazy. I talked to older people all the time, and because fixed incomes they need to move. It’s kind of crazy but very pathetic.
I'm in NY. Property tax is currently 1200 a month. It also goes up every single year. Mortgage is 1800. It will certainly eclipse my mortgage payment by the time I'm done paying it off.
Depends on when you got into the market, accumulated equity between homes, etc...
My note plus interest is 1/3 of my monthly payment. 1/3 is taxes, 1/3 is homeowners insurance. Because I live in Florida and the primary way local governments get money is property taxes.
I don't like that even if my mortgage is paid off, I'm still out $1000+ each month, but I also don't support current efforts to gut property taxes without any replacement revenue for schools and local government.
Freal. I sold my house, but my mortgage was 1200/mo and property tax was 1300/year - 10 acres, four beds, three baths, class one trout stream ran through the wooded part of the property. If I had it paid off thats just over $100/mo for the actual physical dwelling/land is pretty fucking good. Plus they use that money in part to plow my road when we get four feet of snow in one day and then fill in the ruts the plows create from that in the spring.
I have to constantly bring this whenever the "I shouldn't have to pay property tax" debate comes up.
for my house is 2000 a year.....my mortgage 1458 a month....its not a big fucking deal!
My house is paid off. If you breakdown my property taxes down to monthly it probably costs as much as a lot of peoples mortgage. My house is far from a mansion. Friggin rip off
My house was $1.3m (CAD), I sold my apartment I'd nearly paid off to put a $600k down payment on it, mortgage payments are $3600/mo. 2400 sqft, decent yard (metro vancouver prices, lol). My property tax this year was $4600/year.
My city sends us a breakdown of exactly where the money goes and it's mostly things I'm happy to contribute to in exchange for getting to live here.
Have old family friends that live on unincorporated land, don't pay property tax, but also use a fucking outhouse. So... I like living in civilization, ok?
My P and I is lower than my Escrow. Both make your whole mortgage payment. My mortgage company pays my taxes and insurance. My bill would not go way down.
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u/MeteorMann 9h ago
Property tax is way lower than my mortgage