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ThomasMuentzner [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net

5mo ago

Whats your guess on when americans will figure it out ?

63 comments

Military numbers seem grossly undervalued
- $83 billion per month is almost $1 trillion per year. That sounds about right.
  
  Oh dang, missed the part of this monthly.
- Right I thought the average size of a congress approved defense budget was just under a trillion lol
- We don't know their dark money shush fund income or expenditure, and guess who's never passed an audit?
  
  I would be shocked if they were earning a significant amount compared to federal funding. This is monthly, if you missed that like OP.

The US has a problem of representation. Specifically and especially since the Citizens United decision, corporate interests can easily flow money towards politicians to make them do just about anything they want. This exacerbated an existing problem with the corporate tax rate and has now brought it into laughably low territory.
That's all an oversimplification of course, but it's not that Americans haven't "figured it out". It is far more complicated than that.
- Thank you. I'm getting quite tired of people posting the most fucking obvious takes about problems in the US, then going "why haven't americans fixed this? are they stupid?", when we have exceedingly small control over the actions of our shitass policy makers.
  It's some real "everyone is dumb except for me" energy.
- exactly ,
  Passiv Income has 100% of the Delegates and the 2 Major partys ,
  while Active Income has no Represenative at all...

Oh, we've known. There just isn't anything we can do about it.
- You can organize.
  
  Like we did with Occupy Wall Street or are doing now for Palestine?
  
  I'm not American, but generally exploite people can't afford to miss work.
- Imagine if americans were as excited to shoot politicians as they get about shooting kids in school
  
  Yeah I can’t figure it out. All those gun rights. You’d think they’d do more with them
  
  There is a reason why one happens and the other doesn't.
- buissness is getting squezed . also the current minority...

USians spent 4.5 TRILLION dollars on healthcare in 2022.
- Or 375 billion/month, given the month scale in the above image
- It was really bothering me that I was pronouncing this “YOO ESS-EEANNS” in my head every time I saw people using it. I just realized it can definitely also be “YOO-ZHIANS.” Which is obviously far superior.

Estate taxes is woefully small. There should be a 100% death tax on all assets after $1M, excluding a single home.
- The tax formally known as “inheritance tax”.
- Have to keep everyone poor to control them
  
  I'm not sure I understand your point so if I'm off base let me know.
  Firstly, inheriting $200k - $1M doesn't keep anyone poor. It doesn't even stop wealth from concentrating at a level that harms others and warps society - it just prevents that level of wealth from passing down to people who did nothing.
  Secondly, if everyone was poor who would be controlling them? You have to keep most people poor and a much smaller group of people unassailably wealthy to control them. That's exactly the problem that high death taxes address.

Most have, increasingly so, they just lack strong orgs. As Imperialism decays, more will be forced to grapple with reality.

This graph gives the false impression that federal taxes actually pay for anything.
Your Taxes Pay for Nothing
Why The Government Has Infinite Money
The Use and Abuse of MMT
Finding the Money
Alan Greenspan: “The United States can always pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that.”
- The people are in debt... to themselves
  
  And as long as people have confidence in our currency, the debt we owe to ourselves really doesn't matter
- Thank you.
- Thought MMT was recently disproved.
  No sources. Thought the recent inflation showed it to not model things. It would be great if MMT worked though.
  
  MMT isn’t a tool for modeling all of inflation’s factors. It’s simply a description of how sovereign fiat money works. Some people mistakenly (or knowingly, for disparagement or promotion) attribute things to MMT that it just isn’t.

That National Defense slice looking like it could be decimated, also
- It isn't cheap being "leader of the free world".

An astounding amount of our government goes towards taking care of old people, yet it still feels like there is basically no safety net for them.

TBF taxes on billionaires would go under individual taxes. And corporate taxes are relatively easy to fudge because corporations aren't real except on paper.
- TBF you should really put more effort into "figuring it out" because you did not figure it out ..
  i will give you a hint:
  who is getting represented ?
  
  It's a technical detail people might not have been aware of, and I've pointed it out. I'm going to disengage rather than defend a viewpoint I don't even necessarily hold.

The poorest Americans are constantly fighting with the bureaucracy to get assistance, this is by design to make them hate it.
Any addition to the expansion of the state will be met with hostility.
- there is a Ingroup that the Laws shall protect but never hinder , and ther eis a Outgroup that the laws shall hinder, but never protect.

I’d like to see one of these for the UK tax system

No matter how you tax there isn't 300+ billion of income to find. Endless new debt isn't sustainable.
- Endless US debt is fine, provided there keeps being interest in the US dollar as a reserve currency. The US national debt is simply the difference between money printed and money collected. As long as the US dollar “disappears” into the global economy (which it does), inflation is kept under check.

63 comments