He was going to eliminate the deficit

[bobathon]

Spending was $544 BILLION more than revenue over merely the last 5 months. That's 39% higher than the equivalent point a year ago. Since Oct, taxes are down 1% while spending is up 9%.Yeah, burgeoning economy and tax receipts are DOWN.

Now is obviously not the time to balance a budget, right rally? IOKIYAR.

[sipowitz86]

Treasury yield is inverting again last some months. Just like in 2007. Can't wait for our stable genius economy to really kick it into high gear!

[rally2xs]

Give Trump the 15% corporate tax he asked for, and it'll go into high gear. Nuke the income taxes entirely and the USA would dominate the world.

[bobathon]

LOLz.

That's all bullshit. He lies, rally. He lied about taxes for effect. But don't worry, he's not done lying. Or expanding the deficit you formerly cared about.

[No. 1 son]

The only party that can stop the deficit is us the people, by refusing to demand more than we can afford. The only party that can stop drugs from influencing our society is us, by refusing the easy way out, The only people left to stop war profiteering, crime against each other, and a dozen other things is us, and to sit on our ass and hope someone does if for us is not only stupid but self destructive. Damm that felt good.

[rally2xs]

2 items, SS / Medicare / Medicaid, and DoD, take up almost all the revenue collected, save about $100B. Neither of those things should be cut, as they are both extremely vital and would result in citizens's deaths by lack of support for the SS / Medicare / Medicaid, and by enemy action by a diminishment of the DoD, so the ONLY answer is to raise revenues. Unfortunately, the income taxes are a broken vehicle for that, since we've found through the decades that you can raise or lower them until you're blue in the face, and raising them is self-limiting because higher income taxes suppress prosperity, and lowering them raises the revenue but can't raise it enough.

The answer is to nuke the income taxes, and go to consumption taxes, and then we have a chance of nuking the deficit. A nice aspect of that is that it won't cost the gov't a dime more, and in fact will save money when the IRS is disbanded. But we either implement consumption taxes, or the whole country is going to eventually collapse economically, because we will never raise as much money as we're spending by getting it from income taxes.

[bobathon]

Jesusn tittyfucking christ, can you please stop fucking that dead horse?

[minx]

Now you see why Trump and the Republicans can get away with what they're doing - they just say that the Democrats didn't let them go far enough, and they blindly believe it even as their tax refunds disappear, prices go up and their lands go underwater due to climate change.

As long as the stock market is up, it's all good, right?

[rally2xs]

My tax refund didn't disappear, and I paid $1500 less tax overall than last year.

I'm not sure it's just the Democrats that blocked the 15% corporate tax rate, I seem to remember being peeved with some Republicans on the subject, too. And since then, I've come to the conclusion that it is absolutely impossible to balance the budget without seriously cutting SS / Medicare and Defense. Cutting SS/Medicare would kill a lot of people, and cutting Defense might kill the country. So I don't think we can cut our way into a balanced budget, I think we have to raise revenue sufficiently. I also believe you can't use income taxes to do that, because the income taxes have a negative feedback loop that diminishes their effectiveness when raised. That is, you raise them past a certain point, and they begin delivering LESS revenue due to that feedback loop. We passed that point quite some time ago, and further efforts along those lines I believe will always be futile. If we fix it, it will be by abolishing income taxes, and taxing a different way. I'm guessing that we're not going to fix it, and the country will at some point collapse over it. Then millions will die anyway. I can complain about it, I can advise to do things differently, but even if I got myself elected to anything, including President, I don't think I could do anything about it. I'd have to be King to do something about it, and we don't have any of those any more.

And the climate changes naturally, and there's not a damned thing you or anyone else can do about it. We can spend $90 Trillion and according to MIT, for that price they have a mechanism that would suck CO2 out of the atmosphere back to pre-industrial levels, and you know what, I think the warming would continue anyway. Its been doing that since the last ice age and will continue doing until the next ice age. If we can't figure out a way to adapt to it, we're screwed. That's what I think.

[bobathon]

You really do live in a goddamned magical cartoon world, rally.