Do you think government should borrow excessively in order to court future votes?

This is one reason I support the line item veto.
When the economy tanked in 2009, Obama got a huge list of shovel-ready projects to approve. When I saw the list, I was stunned at the number of wasteful pojects.

Why would the government need votes???
Republicans might be more prudent, I suppose, because of one interesting fact about people: They don’t like people who they view as being beneath them to attain more than they themselves are. If someone tries to become more than they are, the Republicans will say stuff like” You can’t do that!” It’s a psychological ploy.

Let me make several points:

1) the government is not borrowing to court votes. Politicians (both sides) may decide that borrowing makes sense for the country, to pay for some government service or another, and in the long term it might (emphasis on might) bring them notes. But the connections is not direct and it is not the least bit assured. It’s a tenuous link at best.

2) some things are worth going into debt to pay for – for example, you wouldn’t think to fight a war – take WW1 or WW2 – out of current operating funds. You would (and the US did – remember War Bonds?) take on the obligation and then over time pay it back.

You as an individual probably bought your house with a mortgage. And likely bought your car with a 5–6 year loan. And if your house unexpectedly needed a new heat pump/air conditioner, there’s a good chance you financed that. Same with government – they sometimes (even often) take on debt.

The debate isn’t about borrowing per se – rather it is about the time and extent of borrowing. That’s the real debate.

3) Finally, if the government is going to borrow money, what better time than right now? Interest rates are less than .20% on T-bills and about 1% on T-notes. If the government is going to borrow, better to do it at these interest rates than when they’re up in the 10% range.

I imagine you’re old enough to remember the Carter years with high inflation and T-bill rates in the 15% range. That cost taxpayers a ton of money. Today – 1% – is a pittance.

Do you really understand how things are done in Government ? ?

Trump borrowed money from Russian Mafia and Putin.

No I don’t think the government should borrow excessively in order to court future votes. But first let’s consider that word “excessive”. The sham argument as to which party is more fiscally responsible should be dismissed, and instead we should concentrate on the priorities of both the government and the solutions to meet those obligations. It isn’t about which party is more responsible if both are dedicated to the proposition that the rich get richer (no matter what). The argument that this is not the accepted priority of the current arrangement between our government and its financing is difficult to reconcile with the history of the country over the past 130 years. The bottom line is that we have a choice as to how we are going to fund our obligations, and we have chosen debt in preference to the rich carrying their share of the load. It is that simple. Otherwise, there is no explaining the rich getting richer as the debt rises and our infrastructure crumbles. The poor proliferate as the middle is squeezed ever more stringently and—-the rich get richer. Of course we shouldn’t have to borrow, but we do and will if the rich MUST get richer. When the borrowed money is all that is left to assure that it continue, THAT is the way it will be.

First of all, let’s point out that no one thinks that the government should borrow “excessively” because “excessively” is—by definition—too much. Furthermore, it begs the question to assume that the purpose of borrowing is to court votes. So not only is the question poorly phrased, it is also a paradigmatic example of a loaded question.

Second, whether or not subsidy checks to middle class people who did not lose their jobs is “wasteful” is not a purely factual question (despite you presenting it as objective fact that it is wasteful). Middle class people who did not lose their jobs may have nevertheless had their pay reduced as a condition of not being laid off, and there are costs to living through a pandemic that are incurred by the employed and unemployed alike. These considerations may not sway you, but it would be disingenuous to pretend that there are not reasonable arguments for paying some amount of subsidy to middle class people who did not lose their jobs (particularly given that there is an income cutoff).

Third, the USPS turns a profit every year. The reason it appears to operate at a loss is the 2006 mandate that the USPS prefund the retiree benefits of its employees. No other government agency is required to do this, and no government agency (or corporation, for that matter) would do it voluntarily, for the obvious reason that it is much less costly to grow a retirement package over time using long-term investment strategies than it is to make the payment up front.

Fourth, it is again a matter of opinion (not fact) whether or not entitlement programs are frivolous, nor is it at all obvious that all defense spending is prudent. In fact, Congress has repeatedly appropriated funds for equipment that the military doesn’t even want.

Fifth, with regard to the COVID-19 relief package currently under debate, you say that “Democrats are intent on spending as much as possible” while “Republicans are intent on holding the line,” yet you opened the question with your realization that “Republicans are as ready to throw money away as Democrats” and “Republican Presidents have contributed more to our national debt over the years than Democratic Presidents.” In other words, the beginning of your question is in tension with the end of it.

So while I would agree that Republicans have successfully represented themselves as being more more fiscally prudent, your own question recognizes that this representation is not necessarily accurate. (On a separate note, I would also argue—following Aristotle—that being fiscally prudent is not the same thing as being tightfisted since prudence is a virtue and being tightfisted is a vice.)

Finally, you ask why should government be treated differently than a corporation. The answer to this, of course, is that the government is not a corporation. It has different interests, different goals, and operates on a completely different scale. A government is supposed to be directly beneficial to everyone in the country, whereas a corporation is only expected to be directly beneficial to its shareholders (though it may turn out to be indirectly beneficial to many others, perhaps even the whole country). When two things are so different, the real question is why we should treat them as if they are alike.

By the way: assuming you are trying to have a genuine discussion with other jellies, you have framed your question in just about the worst way possible. A good argument engages an audience on its terms as much as possible rather than on the terms its author might prefer. We convince people by appealing to their sensibilities, after all, not by insisting on our own.

What is more concerning is the amount of debt held by the public. It has increased over the last 10 years to about 78 percent. I believe that has more to do with wages not equaling inflation. People make less than what they can afford then they borrow to keep afloat.

Eventually, an accident or a loss of a job means extreme poverty, and homelessness, or they file for bankruptcy and businesses fail or banks need to be bailed out. So, why not increase wages to match inflation. Then people don’t need to borrow. Businesses won’t go broke and banks don’t need to be bailed out and more taxes can be collected for necessary programs.
Of course with Covid it isn’t possible for some people to even work right now and struggling businesses can afford to raise wages. So yes, we have to borrow to bail them out till things can run better. As for your question, everything in Government is done to either favor the government or favor voters/citizens. Yes, it’s like buying votes but it’s not like they can say screw the people. We won’t use the tax dollars to help them out or improve the nation. It is literally their job.

The public isn’t voting any time soon. Sometimes I wonder if our politicians are as duped as the general public.

I don’t want a ton of things lumped into one bill, and I don’t want money spent unless we can afford it. When the first stimulus came through for covid I had a ton of friends on Facebook posting “thank you Mr. President.” Made me sick. These people are retired, no money problems. Social security check coming in same as always. How much do you want to bet that if they get a check while Biden is President they will say how terrible it is and the deficit is out of control?

Trump had a booming economy and stock market and the deficit GREW. Reagan almost doubled the debt he inherited. Bush also had the deficit rise during a time when the country probably would have been on board with sacrificing for the country. Clinton had a booming economy and he reduced the deficit to a surplus at one point. Which party has a track record of balancing the budget?

Line item veto would help here.

Members of the government are elected based on their job performance. If borrowing money improves the economy then they will be re-elected. If not, they will be booted out.

@LostInParadise You say: “If borrowing money improves the economy then they will be re-elected. ” You are conflating a long-term debt with a short-term outcome. Do you seriously believe that state governments care about future generations paying for the additional pension benefits that they gave away in order to court popularity (votes)?

@JLeslie I believe I agree with most of what you said. The public is voting in less than two years. The debt we are taking on today will be paid off by not only this generation but future ones as well. Do you really think that AOC (for example) worries about the problems future generations may face?

Those same friends who posted “thank you Mr President” may not post this time around, but they will be smiling in wonderment if they got any more money. The reason Biden and the Democrats want to send them money now is in the hope that they will remember in two years’ time.

@Pandora When you have interest rates this low (2–3% mortgages!) it is almost silly to mot borrow. The problem, of course, is that most borrowers do not seem to realize that interest rates will inevitably rise during the next 20–30 years; therefore they borrow more than they can service when money gets tighter. You say: “I believe that has more to do with wages not equaling inflation.” The fallacy of that statement is so obvious that I will not bother digging up the data. Inflation, as you probably know, has been practically non-existent the last 5–10 years, while wages have continued to grow. You go on to compound your error by your next statement: “So, why not increase wages to match inflation.” There are many problems with doing that:

1. Wages are determined by supply and demand. For instance, the Federal minimum wage has been a joke for many years now, because almost everybody makes more than that.

2. The Federal Government can increase the wages of its own employees, but has no power to require other employers in the country (fortunately, still the majority) to pay more. As I already said, the Federal Minimum Wage has been a joke for many years.

3. Supply of unskilled labor is bolstered by illegal immigration. Why, oh why, don’t you and others, ever mention that link?

You go on to say that the government’s function is to “either favor the government or favor voters/citizens.” I always thought the job was to work for the people.

Clearly we have different views on what constitutes “frivolous” spending.
To me, wasting 700 billion every year on the military industrial complex is frivolous.
Giving handouts and tax breaks to corporations and the über-wealthy, that have no effect other than to further enrich the already rich, is frivolous.

@crazyguy I don’t think AOC worries about it, that is why I am pretty much never her cheerleader, although on some things she is right. I think 90% of the Republicans out there care about their own pockets, don’t want to pay taxes, don’t want to pay for schools for other people’s children, were happy to go to war during Bush and have their taxes cut at the same time, and then complained about their grandchildren having to pay the debt once Obama was president, but not while Bush was president. A time of war is when a country is usually willing to sacrifice and pull together and Bush instead did the opposite. If Republicans really don’t want their grandchildren to pay then we have to pay the expenditures as they happen, or within a reasonable time afterwards. The Republican people seem to have ZERO interest in paying for anything and their politicians cater to it. They says they are the fiscally responsible party, a bunch of them like the Dave Ramsay personal finances method of having no debt, but then do not care at all about the country having debt.

Bernie, Warren, Yang, most Democrats have some sort of plan to pay for their social proposals. Whether it will be enough or needs to be tweaked is another question, but they consider it. Republicans seem to just turn a blind eye o what is being spent, and just say trickle down will fix it all. So far trickle down has never worked. I believe in encouraging business and creating a good environment for business, but it sometimes goes too far making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

@crazyguy , How do you make the determination as to what is excessive borrowing? It could be that short term borrowing at low interest rates will boost the economy, and this has in fact worked in the past.

@SavoirFaire Thanks for a great answer. What makes your answer truly great is that it is given to a badly phrased question. The reason the question is badly phrased is because it does not address all the issues – I am not sure it can. However, you have done an outstanding job of reading between the lines.

I agree “excessively” is a bad word choice. However, I disagree that the purpose is not to court votes. Almost every issue that a legislator supports is that his/her constituency will vote for him/her in the next election. Democrats realize that their base supporters are the lower ends of the economic strata. In order to expand that support, they are always anxious to vote for handouts, even though they know full well that handouts do nothing to close the earnings and wealth gaps.

As far as your second point goes, I am certain you can find some middle class people whose pay was cut as a condition for keeping their jobs. However, I so not think that is the majority. And, as pointed out by @JLeslie, many folks who received checks last time around were retired and had the gall to post “thank you Mr President” even though they had no need for the money. All the Republicans are arguing for is a lower threshold.

You point out one of the things the USPS is required to do. You don’t mention Saturday deliveries or, for that matter, daily deliveries. In years past, I would get most important info through the mail and would anxiously wait for the delivery. Lately, mail sits uncollected for days because it is mostly junk. Yet the USPS is required to deliver the junk to you.

I agree with you 100% that not all “entitlement programs are frivolous, nor is it at all obvious that all defense spending is prudent.” Even a line item veto that many posters have advocated for will not necessarily help, because a President may lao have pet projects and/or special lobbyists. The only solution I think is a complete ban on earmarks; and a maximum limit on the number of pages in a legislative package (less space for earmarks to hide).

Your next point about the question being in tension with itself is well taken. What I meant was that Covid Relief is the sort of bill that Democrats favor. Looking back, Reagan’s first term had a massive boost in Defense spending, and that is where the Democrats preached fiscal discipline.

I agree that fiscal prudence is not the same thing as tightfistedness. To me, the two are defined as follows:

Fiscal prudence: Make certain that allocated funds reach the targeted persons and have the desired effect.
Tightfistedness: Since the requirements of prudence are impossible to meet in every situation, do not allocate any funds.

The Federal government is different from state governments, which in turn are different from county and city governments. I think that, at some level, government must behave as a publicly held corporation. What actually happens is that lobbyists at the local level try to convince legislators that voting for or against a bill will have a bottom line net positive effect. Which is basically what corporations do. The one difference is that corporations measure the net effect in dollars, while government representatives (legislators) measure it in votes.

@SavoirFaire: When I posed my question, I did intend ” to have a genuine discussion with other jellies”. I hope my response to your answer will convince you of my intent, and that you will continue this fruitful discussion.

@stanleybmanly As usual, your post consists of complaints about the present system with no recommendations. So let me try and paraphrase your post into a few bullet points that are easier to digest.

1. Whether you are a Democrat, or a Republican, your primary goal is to make sure the rich get richer.
2. The way to do that is to continue using debt for all expenses, because fixing the tax system may hurt the first goal.
3. You recommended solution appears to be: (and I am guessing here big time) ELIMINATE ALL DEBT. Go back to a Pay as you go system.

Please answer in a non-Professorial way that mere mortals have a chance of understanding.

@elbanditoroso I will readily admit that my question is a bit screwed up. The question is not intended to complain about borrowing. I believe, unlike @stanleybmanly that debt financing makes sense in some situations. The question is really about spending priorities, whether the funds are borrowed or not is secondary. So we agree on the need for debt financing, especially at a time such as now when interest rates are low and the needs of the country are vast.

So, I think, the question I meant to ask is: “How much of the handout proposed by Biden is necessary?” In my response to @SavoirFaire (please read both his answer and my response to it) he made a distinction between tightfistedness and fiscal prudence that I agreed with. In our present situation it is almost impossible to make certain that allocated funds are not wasted. Therefore, we have to select the targets more intelligently in order to have a high probability that allocated funds will not be wasted.

@kritiper Government is made up of people who do need votes to stay in power. I guess you do not know that the first thing a new Congress person is introduced to in Washington DC is the boiler room in which they are supposed to immediately start raising funds for the next campaign. Throughout their term in office they spend anywhere from 2–4 hours every day in the boiler room. So, please get off your high horse – every legislator needs votes, Democrat or Republican.

The masters of the “net positive impact” were the Clintons. Billy Boy would conduct surveys to determine which word in a political speech played better!

You go on to say that Republicans do not “like people who they view as being beneath them to attain more than they themselves”. If you are one of them, please ask yourself which handout has helped you climb out of your situation, and how more handouts will accomplish the feat.

@filmfann The line item veto assumes the President knows best. There is a lot of room for playing favorites. Also the President may have some pet projects and/or pet lobbyists.

I think the better way is to eliminate earmarks and limit the size of each bill.

@crazyguy your reworded question “How much of the handout..” is the better one.

Ultimately it cuts to the question of – “who needs”? And that is a question that has been debated for decades, going back to LBJ and the War on Poverty. There aren’t any simple answers, and there haven’t been for years. The ultimate answer is education and jobs, but those haven’t been consistently available either.

My take would be: if a person or a family has to choose between eating or paying rent – that’s someone who needs assistance. Same with eating versus taking medicine. That person (or family) needs help.

After that, it’s blurry.

@elbanditoroso That is a great answer, mainly because you admit there is a lot we don’t know. The problem is defining a class of people in which the vast majority (I would say at least 70%) fit your criteria. Even income levels below the Republican-proposed ceiling of $40,000 for individuals may include more than 30% who do not have to choose between eating or taking medicine.

“How much of the handout is necessary”? The answer to that one is to be found in another question. How do we avoid the downturn that melts the whole ball of wax? And stanleybmanly does NOT believe that all debt is bad. I do believe that 30 years of massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy in the face of spiraling debt is INEXCUSABLE. I believe that after Obama’s doubling of the nation’s debt to bail out and REWARD the people and institutions RESPONSIBLE for our greatest economic catastrophe, it makes sense to sprinkle money on the people who the rich will guarantee will be stuck repaying that debt. Because in the final analysis, whatever is granted the guy punching a clock, it’s going to wind up one way or another in the pockets and off shore accounts of the plutocrats. That’s the way the dice are loaded. The government will borrow “EXCESSIVELY” because it is thus far impossible to be elected in a land divided between a few billionaires and a sea of paupers.

@crazyguy Doesn’t the top 1% make around 30% of all income? So, then they should be paying 30 something % of he taxes. Probably based on AGI, so not even a fair number. It’s not like they are paying much more of their share. The poor don’t pay much in income tax if anything, and the middle class can’t really afford to pay taxes for the poor, so it stands to reason the rich should be paying a slightly higher percentage of tax.

Meanwhile, in 2009 there was an article in Forbes the top 400 earners in America were making over $200 million a year and paying an average of 17% tax. My guess is they are doing even better now.

That’s a VERY good guess. I changed my mind about crawling away.

@crazyguy I’m not sure that I buy your percentages and income level statements; those are debatable.

The question I would ask is: what’s the harm in being generous and adding more money to the checks?

One objection is that it might raise inflation, but that’s basically a non-issue and will be for years, and at the levels and additional increments we are talking about, it won’t make any difference at all vis-a-vis inflation.

You might respond “but it increases the national debt” which is true, but that argument didn’t seem to bother republicans when the tax cut was passed two years ago. And I would argue that there are societal benefits to being more generous than less.

@JLeslie ”...it stands to reason the rich should be paying a slightly higher percentage of tax.” [emphasis added]

Fuck that. You admitted that Reaganomics is a disaster. It’s time to return to pre-Reagan progressive taxation. We should be pursuing the tax policy of radical leftist Republicans like Eisenhower and Nixon (way further left than Bernie’s proposals). As Dr. King put it:

“This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” [emphasis added]

Reaganomics proved that slashing the top marginal tax rates not only fails to trickle-down, but it also leads to a broken political system with a few hundred oligarchs who dictate policy to benefit themselves. It is literally destroying America and leading to desperate and ignorant people being susceptible to populist, right-wing, extremist messaging that we have seen time-and-again throughout history, or this, or this.

The problem is mostly on the revenue side being way lower than it should be. Social programs are investments in the people. ”...For every $1 invested in the GI Bill, $7 went back into the American economy.” (source). Imagine if we decided to expand tuition-free public college and tradeskills programs to all Americans? If anyone wants to think of the government as a corporation, not making that investment with a 700% ROI is moronic and the CEO should be sued for violating the fiduciary duty to their shareholders.

Healthcare is another example. It’s the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US. We pay WAY MORE, receive much worse care overall than single-payer systems that all other developed economies, and leads to something like 45k deaths per year from lack of coverage, all so we can fund middlemen and Big Pharma who are benefiting from public investments in medical research and privatizing the profits. If you were the CEO and were evaluating the options for your company’s health plan, you’d be crazy to pick the one that costs your employees more, leaves them less healthy, and at risk of financial ruin when a cheaper and comprehensive option exists.

The solution is to elect representatives that don’t take donations from big-money interests, or accept 6-figure checks to give speeches. It’s bribery and corruption, period. Doing so should be disqualifying. Call it a “litmus test” if you want, but having your representatives focused solely on their constituents instead of their donors is the bare minimum to effect the necessary change. Both parties are absolutely teeming with corruption.

You also need to think about what percentage of income means for people.
If you take 50% of a billionaire’s income, he will still live in more luxury than even the richest kings of ages past.
Take 50% of a poor or even middle class person, he might as well jump off a bridge and end it all.

I will repeat what the mods deemed unworthy (minus the assessment of my opposition). It matters not what percentage of the tax burden is shouldered by the rich if they can accumulate wealth while EVERYONE else gets squeezed—the rich are undertaxed. There is NO WAY AROUND IT.

What is also true, is that all that wealth that those billionaires and giant corporations have amassed, was produced by the millions of people that work for them.
It is the working class that produce all those trillions, but it is billionaires that withhold and claim for themselves the wealth that the workers have created.

And talking about handouts:
We are in the situation that employees that work full time, and/or have several jobs, still need government aid to survive.
Despite being derided as handouts to the workers, they are actually handouts to corporations, because the state ends up having to pay part of the wages and salaries, that the companies should be paying instead.

It’s all a shell game to steer the wealth to the top. The country is a casino, and we know who owns the “house”, and which suckers REALLY pay the bills for all those bright lights.

@gorillapaws I think we are agreeing for the most part. Hey, I use that ROI argument for paying for education for people also. My dad went to college for free and the return to society has been huge both in tax money to the federal government and other contributions not measured by money.

I don’t think we can get Republicans to a huge tax increase, but we can definitely go higher than where we are now. You might say we have the power now we don’t need the Republicans, but I am just hoping to not have a big case of whiplash, when they retaliate. Probably naive.

I am conservative enough that I don’t want to just through money at healthcare. You say other countries pay much less, well, what will America do to ensure the cost will be less? My insurance through ACA was a FORTUNE and the doctors here in my opinion commit fraud every day in the Medicare system having seniors come in more often than necessary even during covid when it is risky for them.

Same with education, I hear Democrats talking about paying for education, but why is it so fricking expensive to begin with. Moreover, I don’t want it just covering community college, I want young adults who want to go to four year universities who have amazing potential to go to the schools that can help them thrive. I also don’t want the poor to miss out on the university experience if they want to choose and qualify.

@JLeslie Wow! The F word; you must be excited.

You asked earlier if the top 1% makes 30% of all income.The reported share was 21% in 2017. Per https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2020-update/.

Since they paid 38.5% of all taxes collected, they paid a significantly higher share of their income. Sure you can raise the percentage even higher; but that may turn out to be counterproductive.

As far as comparisons to 2009 go, the top 1% paid an average rate of 26.8% in 2017.

Now to your new post.

The part of yup our post that makes me yell THREE CHEERS is: “why is it so fricking expensive to begin with”. You asked that question about education. I have been asking it about healthcare. The famous Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) did nothing at all about making healthcare more affordable. It just transferred the burden. The real solution has to be based on transparency and competition.

As far as free college goes, I have a few observations:

1. Not every kid is qualified to go to 4-year college. Not every kid even wants to go to college. Some would be much better off in apprentice training.
2. The ones with “amazing potential” score scholarships.
3. By making it free all you do is lower the overall standard of college.
4. Any high school grad who does not get a suitable job will decide to idle away a year or two in ‘free college’ with zero intention of graduating.

@ragingloli All that is required to become a billionaire are an idea, and financing. The rest is easy. There is no end to available labor (who by the way have the same opportunity to build a business). Now, after the business succeeds you want the founders to share their wealth with the workers? No. You want the government to take it away from the founders and give it to the workers!

@ragingloli So let us take more than 50% of a billionaire’s income. Let us take away enough that s/he is forced to “jump off a bridge”. Geez!

“Now, after the business succeeds you want the founders to share their wealth with the workers? No. You want the government to take it away from the founders and give it to the workers!”
I want the founders to pay their workers the share of the wealth they created.
And if they actually did that, there would be no problem.
If they acted with responsibility towards their workers, towards society, towards the environment, there would be no need for minimum wage laws, worker’s rights laws, safety regulations, environmental regulations, or government assistance for the working poor.

But they do not do that. They pay them as little as they possibly can. They treat them as badly as they can get away with to save money. They pollute the environment and cheat their customers to save a buck. You can see that even today in China, where companies treat their workers so terribly, and pay them so little, that they started jumping off factory roofs, and instead of treating their workers fairly, started installing nets on their roofs, to prevent them from jumping.
Laws are almost never passed preemptively, to address some problem that might arise in the future. They are almost always passed after something terrible happens.
These laws, regulations, and government welfare exist, because corporations do not act responsibly.

During the pandemic, Jeff Bezos of Amazon increased his wealth by 80 billion, while the people working in his warehouses are forced to work so much, that they can not even take bathroom breaks and have to literally piss into bottles.

@crazyguy There is no such thing as competition in healthcare. There are patents. Hospital systems that buy up a region and are vertically integrated to monopolize and set prices. People who have an emergency cannot pick and choose and shop around. Healthcare colludes. Healthcare gouges people in their most dire times, when near death.

I have to do more research on the income, I don’t have time now. What I will say is the the rich are not taxed sales tax on as much of their income as the middle class and the poor. Someone who makes $35,000 spends all of their money just to live, while someone who makes $3 million easily could have $1 million extra money just to put into investments to grow into more money. The rich have all sorts of money tax free. Even I have something like $35K I sock away tax free between my husband and me and 401K’s, HSA, SEP, I am not sure exactly how much it is. How can a person making $35K sock away money tax free like I do? It’s an unjust system that works against the poor and lower middle class.

@gorillapaws How mistaken you are. Here is a quote:

” The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity.
Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly doubling in inflation-adjusted terms between the late 1940s and early 1970s.
The gap between those high up the income ladder and those on the middle and lower rungs — while substantial — did not change much during this period.”

This quote is taken from

https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality

To me the most interesting part is that even during a 20-odd year period of ” broadly shared prosperity”, ” The gap between those high up the income ladder and those on the middle and lower rungs — while substantial — did not change much during this period”

What does that tell you about progressive tax rates? What I have deduced is that they do not address income inequality, and do not assure continued prosperity.

Of course, we all know what happened to our economy just before Reagan came into power.

I will readily admit that we have to solve the massive problems of wealth and income inequality. Left unchecked, these two will inevitably lead to a French-style or Russia-style revolution. Of course we know that the aftermaths of the revolution in both Russia and France was disastrous. The latest information about wealth inequality as measured by the GINI coefficient is compiled in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_equality

It shows that the GINI index for the world as a whole in 2019 was 0.885 (Keep in mind that 0 is perfect equality and 1 is absolute inequality where one person has the entire wealth). According to Wikipedia, just one country was even more unequal than the world as a whole: Netherlands. (To me the data appears screwy; I would have expected the number for the world as a whole to be in the middle of the pack). However, the important numbers are for Russia (0.879), the US (0.852) and France (0.687). Please note that, even though the scores are relatively close, France is two-thirds of the way down the table. In other words France is only slightly more unequal than the most equal country (Slovakia at 0.498).

You also make an argument about single payer healthcare versus our current system. I dislike our current system intensely, not because it is bad, but it costs an arm and a leg (sometimes literally). However, in all my travels, I have not seen a better system. All the so-called single payor systems are cheaper if you ignore the cost of supplemental health care that almost all countries allow. The only exception that I know of is Canada. For rich Canadians the choices are plentiful across the border. Be careful what you wish for.

I better stop now before my post becomes longer than a famous poster here.

@ragingloli OK. I get what you are saying. You want the CEO of a successful company to pay his workers much more than the competition? How long do you think such a CEO will last?

Oh wait a minute. I can hear the wheels of your brain working. If you have your way, there would be no lower paid competition – they would all be paying “living wages”. All I can say, my friend, is DREAM ON! In fact, even if the Federal Minimum Wage were $30 per hour, no CEO in his/her right mind would pay that if they could get away with paying less. With an unlimited supply of illegal immigrants there is absolutely no upward pressure on wages, since wages are set by supply and demand.

Jeff Bezos, the darling CEO of the liberals (after all he owns The Washington Post), paid his workers $15 per hour (with medical insurance) and yet made a fortune. Should he pay them even more?

@JLeslie Sales tax is regressive. It is the only consumption tax we have. Many other countries have a VAT (value added tax), which is usually much higher than our typical sales tax rate of 4–8%. All consumption taxes are regressive because they tax spending.

Some of the liberal countries that are loved on this board have the highest VAT rates. See for yourself-
https://www.uscib.org/value-added-tax-rates-vat-by-country/

Sure the poor are at a huge disadvantage in the US. However, I have the benefit of having seen the plight of the poor in other countries; no wonder they all flock to the US. Try opening the borders to all-comers for a month!

@crazyguy I agree that the US is wonderful compared to many countries. Part of the reason is TAXES. People from the third world like to go to Western Europe too, not just America.

Many of the more liberal countries have very high income tax on top incomes and they also have less disparity in income to begin with.

See the bar graph on this link with taxes by country. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_in_Europe

@crazyguy OOPS! I didn’t mean that just Republicans are like that. Actually, all people, generally speaking, are like that but Republicans are the worst, generally speaking. I heard that about people from a guy who was very successful in a multi-level marketing company, and I have seen it many times so it seems to hold true. Study people more during your life and you may well see for yourself that it holds true.
Your question mentions “votes” but you aren’t clear about what kind of votes you mean and where they supposedly/might come from.

@kritiper Are you saying that even Democrats try to hold other people down so they can use them to piggyback to success? I believe that is a human tendency, probably more prevalent in the hard, ambitious types.

As far as votes go, Democrats have realized over the years that you can ‘buy’ votes through handouts. Handouts are easier to understand and provide instant gratification.