BlutoSays wrote:All three of you are wrong as can be.
1] We have a system now where 57% of households pay no income taxes (those are IRS numbers)*. They vote for free shit because they know they won't have to pay for it and don't have a stake in paying for it, but they'll gladly continue to be takers.
2] That's why we need a flat-tax where everyone "feels" the effects of their voting choices. Anything else is self-destructive.
3] "People will not see their kids starve while the food stores are full of food."
Stores are less full of food than they used to be. That trend will drop further, and we'll have shortages because people like you are running the government. See 1960's East Germany. We're headed that way.
4] You have this idea that we're the richest nation, but then again, you couldn't find your butt with 10 mirrors, a flashlight and ten hands.
WE ARE A DEBTOR NATION. Get that thru your thick head. We are NOT a rich nation. We have a debt of $91K per person. ( http://www.usdebtclock.org )
* https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/25/57perce ... study.html
When you're in a hole, stop digging.
My replies are numbered with the numbers I added to your post for clarity.
1] It doesn't matter what the 57% of voters (that you are referring to) vote for, because they are not in Congress and their Reps. & Senators in Congress don't pay any attention to public opinion polls or how those voters vote. The People in Congress vote for the things the top 20% or more so the top 2% want them to vote for.
. . . Bluto, I know that you don't believe this fact, but no taxpayer pays for any thing the Gov. spends to fund. Way back in colonial VA, the colonial Gov. had to issue paper money. It backed it with a new tax. When people paid their taxes with this newly printed money, the VA Gov. burned the paper "Pounds". [It was colonial times so they still used Pounds.] If it needed more money the VA Gov. printed it.
. . . Today, everyone pays their taxes with a check. Almost zero paper dollars are use to pay taxes. The Gov. can't burn the electronic dollars it received. but I have seen claims that it does burn the few paper dollars it gets from Libertarians because an armored truck to move them is more expensive than creating new electronic dollars when the Gov. wants to spend (or printing new paper dollars to replace the burned ones).
. . . When the US Gov. gets a tax payment check it "deposits" it in the Gov. account at the Fed. Just like people or corps would do. However, its account at the Fed is different from all other accounts, because by law the Fed can never bounce a US Gov. check, it must honor and pay the check. Usually, the Treasury has sold bonds to be sure its account has enough to honor all its checks.
. . . Summary. So, no taxpayer pays for what the Gov. buys or gives to people. All spent dollars are created by the act of spending them. All of the spending is done electronically, just like much of your spending is done on your computer making payments. The Gov. spends petty cash with debit cards, not cash, AFAIK.
As for "takers". Do you realize that the corp, Amazon, paid no corp income taxes and got a "refund" anyway.
Clearly Amazon is as much of a taker as you accuse the working poor as being.
. . . The percentage of taxpayers who didn't pay income taxes increased in 2021 because the were unemployed and stimulus checks were not taxable. Maybe unemployment payments were also not taxable.
2] Your conclusion that "Anything else is self-destructive." is not true, because I showed how one of your premises is false. IMO, what is self-destructive is not taxing the rich and corps.
3] People like me are not running the Gov. I know because I would do a lot of things very different. The food shortages in US food stores are not being caused by the Gov. deficit. They are caused by droughts, by covid and supply chain bottlenecks (like meat packing plants being closed because the workers were all sick), by food imports being slowed by worldwide snafus in sea shipping, etc.
. . . As long as there is any food in the food stores they can be looted by riots when the peoples' kids are starving.
4] I know you don't believe this but the vast majority of dollars in the world were created out of thin air either by banks making loans or the US Gov. deficit spending in the past. Of all the dollars in the world the only ones not created in one of these 2 ways were the net of those in the world in 1913 (when the Fed. was created) less the national debt at that time. [These dollars were the hold over from the gold dollars minted by the US Gov. in past times. The current money supply is vastly larger than it was in 1913. My seat of my pants guess of what percentage of the current money supply can be put in that group is less than 1% of the current money supply, and maybe less than 0.1%
. . . Basically, all currencies, all dollars, are created by debts.
. . . Over on the "Credit and Debt" page here on pofo, I have posted to threads about 'How can the US pay off its debt", etc. I have explained that the US can never pay-off the national debt, it will have to roll it over forever. I blame Repud Pres. since 1981 and Reagan for this. They have cut taxes and increased spending like drunken sailors. The debt has gone from $1 T all the way to over $30 T in the 41 years since 1981.
. . . I have explained that all debts are both a liability for someone and an asset for someone else. You just look at the Gov. liability side and ignore the asset side. [Paying-off the US national debt would extinguish all those $30 T of assets.] You also ignore the fact that the world is off the gold standard. The main result of this is the fact the most nations (not those in the EuroZone) can as a result always make every payment that it owes if it is in its own currency. So, because all of the US national debt is owed in US dollars, the US Gov. can always pay the payments on it forever. It doesn't need tax receipts to do it. You may not like this situation, but it is the current situation. I think that you likely want to not be in that situation because you think that it is going someday to be a problem. OK, we can discuss this. However, it s my opinion that all other money systems failed in the past. The US had 6or 7 Bank Panics from 1790 until 1913 and then another in 1929. All these Bank Panics were the same as depressions. The US has had zero depressions since it went off gold in 1971. It has had 3 recessions since 1999. I assert that with modern fiat money the Gov. can do a much better job of regulating the economy to avoid recessions. It doesn't because people like me are not in charge. The people who are in charge still act as if the US was on the gold standard when it comes to regulating the economy and giving to the "takers" who are the working poor, [b] but it is totally willing to give to the takers who are either big banks, big corps, or rich people without needing to "pay for or it". The US Gov. hands out dollars to those 3 groups of takers in massive amounts far in excess of the amounts they in total pay in income taxes. And, you, Bluto, ignore that fact.
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