Or alternately raise taxes in the good times (rather than interest rates) and pay down that debt... which at least in the US we've got one political party dead set against at all costs.
A generation ago, progressive cycles of deficit spending and taxation had put the top tax bracket in the US at 90%. Still, there was persistent inflation - and worse high unemployment.
The belief was that the Federal Government had grown too large in the economy and needed to be "starved". To what extent government austerity vs. new monetary policy moved the needle for the US economy is unknowable. However many Americans of that generation feel that the starve the beast approach was correct.
If you talk to Americans opposed to new taxes, their opposition is usually based on the idea that the government will waste the money in one way or another. Even those on the left in favor of taxes are often in favor of taxes for redistribution purposes. It's rare that anyone pitches the government as competent outside of military spending, and even then there are many asterisks on 10k light bulbs in submarines.
If you want Americans to agree to taxes you'll need to change the perception of government competence.
> A generation ago, progressive cycles of deficit spending and taxation had put the top tax bracket in the US at 90%. Still, there was persistent inflation - and worse high unemployment.
AFAIK the "90%" rate is highly misleading because at the time there were a lot of deductions that bring the effective rate much closer to today's levels. We can see this in the federal tax receipts as % of GDP, which remained mostly flat despite the top bracket dropping from "90%" to 37%
"A generation ago, progressive cycles of deficit spending and taxation had put the top tax bracket in the US at 90%."
This is incorrect.
The 90% tax rate (and other notably high tax rates from that period) were temporary measures explicitly enacted to discourage war profiteering:
"The crisis of World War II led Congress to pass four excess profits statutes between 1940 and 1943. The 1940 rates ranged from 25 to 50 percent and the 1941 ones from 35 to 60 percent. In 1942, a flat rate of 90 percent was adopted, with a postwar refund of 10 percent; in 1943 the rate was increased to 95 percent, with a 10 percent refund." [1]
These were not tax rates analogous to any of our normal, peacetime rates and they were not enacted as progressive policy measures.
It is misleading and disingenuous to make any comparison between the tax rates we choose in modern peacetime which arise from political decisions about relatively progressive vs. regressive rates, etc., and these administrative rates designed to combat war profiteering and other behaviors related to a wartime economy.
No, but there is a method to the madness. Military units are often given an allowance for the year. One of the responsibilities of a commissioned officer is to often manage the unit's finances. Being in the Navy, my Bosun manage my aviation fuel division's finances. The captain of the ship manages the ships finances. Or at least, they sign it all off. If units do not use their budget, their budget get slashed last year. Essentially money mismanagement comes down in many way to some rules implemented awhile back (80s I believe during the Reagan admin). If a government agency or group does not use the full amount allotted, then they are at risk of loosing some next time they are allotted money. What this has done is create a system that encourages government agencies and military units to use up the budget no matter the cost. You don't wanna be the guy who had money left over last year, so your budget got cut, not it is this year and you had 4 major equipment casualties and because your shortened budget, can't afford for the unit to buy parts. Then, this makes you looked incompetent and hurts your career.
This is why the fuels division I was in, we often bought new desk chairs every year and $500 pocket knives and parts we would never need. Literally had to throw parts away to make room for the new parts.
Nope, but the military gets a pass in most years as at least being competent. Most Americans believe that most government agencies are both incompetent and profligate.
That's too broad a brush. I'm against militarism, but what engagement against conventional forces has the US military lost in the last 20 years?
I can't speak to dealing with insurgencies but it's clear to me that a mix of various administrations policies was to blame more than military effectiveness.
I mean was it the military or Paul Bremmer and co who disbanded the Iraqi military and unleashed a lot of chaos?
I don't want to say yes but damn if we don't have a lot of military might, and as much as an American I want to say stop spending it who will fill the void? We're probably the least bad of all possibilities, and if you disagree, please teach me because I'm legitimately open minded!
The first is that other Western countries could pick up the slack instead of having it fall disproportionately on the US. It only got the way it is because the others were mostly bombed out after WWII and that's no longer the case.
The second is that if the US spent less and did less military interventionism, adversarial countries might not feel the need to spend as much either, and then the balance of power stays the same while everyone spends less money on bombs and warships.
The US is the only one who can initiate this because they're the only ones who can reduce military spending without being threatened even if others don't.
The perception is created by billionaires buying "news" media to spread propaganda to get people to vote against their own interests, leading to "hurts itself in its confusion" attitudes like "keep the government out of my Medicare".
The Kochs, leaders of the "small government" movement are the heirs of a billionaire whoade his fortune building oil refinery for communist USSR government. They only dislike government when it helps the people instead of the oligarchs.
Ironically the thing about the Kochs is a little bit reversed. They have their own agenda, to be sure, but the biggest players in the influence game aren't individual billionaires, they're corporations and government bureaucracies.
The media always dumps on the Kochs because, atypically, part of their agenda is anti-graft. Make the government smaller by reducing corrupt spending programs and regulatory capture. Most of the bureaucracies fight each other for resources but they're not trying to turn off the spigot. The one who does becomes a target for attack. So they're the ones you've heard of.
I assume you're taking a swipe at Team Red, but do remember that the recent TCJA had a provision that removed the ability to deduct state/local (SALT) taxes from your Federal taxes due, above a certain amount. One could consider this very fair: if you argue for higher (Federal) taxes, you should pay what's owed, regardless of what you paid to any local governments, especially since you have much more control over where you live and the taxation policies at the local and state level.
The uproar about this change from Team Blue was palpable; this was clearly a targeted attack on liberal, high-tax areas. The cutoffs for the changes were well above an income level of $150K, which meant it went after the 'rich' that Team Blue always positions as the enemy, but none of that mattered.
Nobody wants more taxation when it actually hits their pocketbook. If there's anything the constituents of the two major political parties can agree on, it's that.
It was a tax cut bill with tax increases targeted at political enemies. There are many other loopholes that could have been closed but Trump was all about attacking political enemies. The anger wasn't at the tax increases it was about the abuse of power.
Somehow the Red "cut the taxes and spending" never give back the net inflows they take from Blue states....
Blue states have higher taxes to care for their citizens so they have to take less in Federal handouts.
What's the distinction? I always assumed "blue states" meant a majority of voters in that state voted blue, likewise for red states. Otherwise you might as well say "there's no blue cities, only blue neighbourhoods" and keep getting more granular down to the individual voter.
The distinction is that cities are blue and non-cities aren't, as a rule. "Blue states" are just states where the majority of the population lives in cities.
California is a net recipient of federal money (though not by a lot). The biggest donors are the blue states in the northeast. But plenty of blue states are recipients and the biggest recipients are the swing states, because politicians shamelessly buy their votes.
And the reason the states in the northeast pay the most isn't because of state-level benefits reducing the need for federal programs (which rarely if ever happens). It's because those states are disproportionately the wealthy people who pay the most taxes.
But getting rid of the SALT deduction didn't care about that. Wealthy people in California lost more than equally wealthy people in New Hampshire, even though California is a net recipient and New Hampshire is a net donor, because New Hampshire has lower state and local taxes.
A state being a net contributor generally means they have a lot of high paying jobs and successful companies concentrated in their state. Michigan is actually a good example as you can see when the big 3 auto companies were at their peak the state was a net contributor, but it has been a receiver since their decline.
But that's not how the federal government is supposed to work? The whole point is for them to engage in redistributive policies, which means you inevitably have "never give back the net inflows they take". I'm sure economically unproductive areas (eg. rural areas) "never give back the net inflows they take from" economically productive areas (ie. major cities), but we don't give people living in cities a tax credit.
This also points to a weird but true situation: Many blue states would be financially better off (or at least neutral) to eliminate federal programs and replace them with state programs, because the smaller the federal budget, the smaller the net outflow from blue cities.
But then they weirdly push for the opposite to the financial detriment of their own constituents, including the lower income ones who could have higher state benefits than existing federal benefits if the feds weren't taking so much of their state's money.
Best guess for why this happens is that the blue team is more captured by government sector lobbyists at the federal level, who don't want to lose jobs to state level government workers.
Even the extremists admit (thought they try to hide it) the Bill Clinton paid down the debt by raising taxes and cutting military spending by not starting large new wars. Caro insulted Clinton for proposing a $200B/ye deficit, right before Bush 2 issued a one-year addition of $1T in new military spending for his personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein launched on false pretenses.
The 90's sure were great, I miss voting for Bill! But those days are long over, and most partisans today seem brutally disappointed in Biden because he's only spent $1 trillion instead of $3 or $4.
