Do you think the government is good at spending money? “This is a 1,600-foot-long high-speed rail bridge to nowhere that costs $11 billion.” https://x.com/ajtourville/status/1787239959713272067?s=46&t=_UGZX58S_1YZ6EvADUNwPA
"Do you think the government is good at spending money?" Why do Republicans constantly increase military spending? Do they think the government is good at spending money?
Core function of a country. Funding a pyramid scheme (social security) is not
Why do republicans lick rich people’s boots rather than just looking at the data? This country was growing the most and at its most successful when rich peoples taxes were at 90%. When dems are in power, jobless rates go down, suggesting that giving free money to rich “job creators”, doesn’t actually create jobs. I mean, why work when the government is giving them money for free?
Because they are not rich themselves.
Because it doesn't make sense that poor people are taxed more than wealthy people. Too many loopholes for the wealthy to pay next to nothing.
Historically, Republican administrations deficit spend at a rate far higher than Democratic ones. But Republican admins talk a great game.
Right, it’s not like we have a serious crisis with wealth inequality in this country that keeps growing by the day…
To pay down the government debt from decades of tax cuts to the rich.
Because the rich pay far too little, as measured by share of the overall spending power, in the U.S. currently. It’s the lowest it’s ever been, and has trended down as effective tax rates on low and middle income brackets have remained steady, or increased. What this leads to is a concentration of wealth. A small group of people begin to accumulate larger and larger slices of economic power and influence, and lower and mid-income earners see their slice of economic power & influence continue to shrink, compressing formerly mid-income, mid-class families and professions down into “poor” territory, while the same set of upper-class people simply get rocketed upwards even further. Millionaires becoming billionaires, billionaires becoming trillionaires. Meanwhile, everyone else slides down the slope towards poverty, causing the pool of “poor” to continue growing larger and larger. What happens is we go from having a nice, healthy distribution of socioeconomic brackets ranging from some poor and some rich, but with plenty of everyone in between, to a more stratified distribution of small group of extremely wealthy and a gigantic share of poor, with very little in between. This is not only socially and morally undesirable, but it’s also economically dysfunctional and precarious.
See here for some additional points and a few visualizations: https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxnotes/2023/03/20/are-the-superrich-more-burdened-and-paying-the-highest-tax-rates/
Also RE: your question about if we think the gov’t is good at spending money. Speaking for myself: I think there is A LOT of room for improvement in gov’t spending, fiscal responsibility and accountability. Which is why I also want different people voted in vs. who has been, and is currently, filling the seats. However, fixing the rich-advantaged tax code and electing more responsible representatives and updating policy priorities such that the most important matters get appropriate funding, are not mutually exclusive.
'That figure includes the Fresno Viaduct and numerous other bridge and overpasses that have already been built for the first phase of the project' ’California High Speed Rail Authority later clarified that the project took three years to finish, and that it was actually completed in 2018.' Also, it's interesting that you linked a tweet from an Elon-bros.. you can see why they would misconstrue this..
Fair enough, but the entire CA high speed rail project exemplifies my statement about government not being a good spender of capital. Therefore why do you want to give them more?
If you have an issue with CA gov, you have even a bigger issue with almost any other state, in fact, almost any other country (bar some Nordic and some other smaller countries). You can be angry/upset at the system or do what you can to improve it, by voting. Just make sure you vote for the people who actually do something and not just yell about things they don't like.
Rich people have more money per capita and the middle/lower class people hate and/or are jealous of rich people. However if you look at the tax code and what actually gets passed in congress, the 90-99% percentiles are who get milked the hardest. The top 1% get favorable tax rates (0-23%) on their passive income (capital gains) while high-income W2 get a marginal rate of 50%+. This keeps the donor class happy. Poor people get low or no taxes along with various government benefits. This keeps poor people happy enough to not vote for the other side.
It's just stupid. I would reduce every ones taxes so people can spend more. Economy grows due to consumer spending and not by taxing the hell out of people.