Is there really any correlation between tax revenue and spending at the federal level anymore? It seems the U.S. government is willing to spend at huge deficit levels. If everyone stopped paying federal taxes I suspect nothing would change.
What would change is the government would need to greatly increase their debt. In 2025 the government got about $5.23 trillion in tax revenue and spent about $7 trillion. So most of the government spending is financed by taxes. Remove that and the rate of debt quadruples (and by extension inflation).
Fact is US is able to run up 39 trillion and counting in debt because it prints the god damn monopoly money. No one would offer a loan to someone with that financial history. Shit really went off the rails after Bretton-Woods, huh?
Up to now, I would have agreed with you. However, many residents of cities victimized by ICE see paying federal taxes as money that goes directly toward an enemy that is destroying their communities. I will happily pay my city and state taxes, but I no longer feel that my my federal tax dollars are helping much.
I live in Minneapolis, MN. The Federal government has cut public health grants, Medicaid, laid off a large portion of he Department of Health, cut Department of Human services, cut school funding, cut University of Minnesota funding, cut heating assistance, cut flood mitigation, cut USDA programs, and cut SNAP. This is just the things I can remember! Our city hosts Hennepin County Medical Center, which provides emergency care to the entire state, and it is risking closing due to federal cuts.
Minnesota has historically paid more in federal taxes than other states, and contributes more than it gets back. I think it's time for a change.
>The Federal government has cut public health grants, Medicaid, laid off a large portion of he Department of Health, cut Department of Human services, cut school funding, cut University of Minnesota funding, cut heating assistance, cut flood mitigation, cut USDA programs, and cut SNAP.
Not paying taxes isn't going to re-fund these things. In fact, it will ensure they don't get funded.
There are always people who don't agree with a particular government's funding priorities; if we didn't pay when we don't agree, government would happen when we do support its priorities.
What if you were keeping the $1000 in a bank account and I will invest $900 into a scholarship to pay for someone's education. You can invest $0.90 into roads. Now the example has a collective benefit for both of us.
You keep making these silly examples that are not how taxes work. Try again with everyone investing $0.90 into roads, and everyone investing $900 into education.
And does our government do that? It seems we have one party that wants to pay for theatrical law enforcement and another party that wants to pay for performative DEI nonsense
That's good, love how you're co-opting anti-semitism for your own political ends.
"Blood libel" refers to a specifically anti-Jewish trope of alleging that Jews murder Christians, especially children, to use their blood for religious rituals. Grandparent comment is 100% not blood libel.
There's no lemonade to be found here at this time. What there is to be found are a bunch of tone-deaf people who seem utterly ignorant and indifferent to the war's reality.
Obviously there is, you just refuse to recognize it. I think this war is terrible, Trump is the worst president of American history by a wide margin, and yet, I can still be happy that we are able to glean insight from learnings that came about as a result of forces not under my control.
Finding good among the bad is such a commonplace occurrence that my native tongue, English, has many metaphors for it. I already mentioned making lemons into lemonade; there is also "every cloud has a silver lining," "every dog has his day," "light at the end of the tunnel," and "April showers bring May flowers"
I suspect you would respond, "but Mayflowers brought genocidal white settlers!!!!"
As a Mayflower descendant I would scarcely say that. But the fact that you offer cheap platitudes and tales from hundreds of years ago to justify why it's OK to consider why the current bombing and slaughter is good for our work-life balance remains astonishingly tone-deaf. This is absolutely a you problem.
You're getting downvoted, but people should be aware that arguments like this sometimes only reinforce the other party's position in their minds. My recommendation is also not to bother with those debates (unless you're doing it to find deficiencies in your own position).
There are elements of truth to this, but then there's other elements (here) who have said that we somehow owe it to people to argue in good faith with them when they are talking of (the ones I've personally had mentioned): post-birth abortion ("in several Democrat states, abortion is legal up to one month post birth!"), adrenochrome harvesting, etc.
That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".
The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.
So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".
> It's not really a choice but a demonstration of intelligence and empathy. Still, if you deliberately decide to remain ignorant, or simply fail to understand the opposition's position even despite your best efforts, it shouldn't surprise you when you also fail to convince people your position is the correct one.
Like huh? It is okay for them to be objectively dishonest, and have zero shred of empathy, curiosity for my position, but refusing to engage on a good faith basis is a failing of mine?
> Once you reach this stage, your commentary pretty much just becomes elaborate whining, which makes a poor impression of yourself and actually pushes people away from your position.
This is literally Idiocracy in the making.
If I make a poor impression on people by repeatedly shutting down their horseshit about doctors performing "abortions" up to a week or a month after birth, or that babies are being harvested in the basement of a pizza parlor for their adrenachrome, and you're more concerned about how I should be "understanding" of that perspective, again, you're also supporting the idiocracy.
Our whole system is a binary carrot and stick. Im not sure we are going to see much change when/if democrats return to power. IMHO politics is manufactured to keep the people placated while the people in power to continue business as usual. If you want real change there has to be some kind of movement from grassroots that ends citizens united and starts enforcing anti-trust legislation independent of party politics.
I was looking at this one organization[0], they want to do a constitutional amendment. At this point, I cant disagree with them, but with this administration, I don't know what good its going to do.
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