A genuinely curious question to taxpayers who think they are funding the country:
With 33T debts and deficit spending being the norm, why should I pay taxes? How much of what we pay as taxes actually go to fund "the country"? Part of me still wants to believe I as a responsible citizen should feel good that I pay my taxes but it increasingly feels to me a very small part of what we pay as taxes actually go to things that matter and ultimately deficit spending will be the only way by the time I would be entitled to enjoy some of the social security benefits to fund them.
I live in a state that does not have income taxes.
The US government gets a big pool of money, which includes your taxes. That pool of money pays for a huge variety of things like roads, air traffic control, research grants, the military, NASA, justice system, and the list goes on and on.
A portion of the money services debts — just like in your personal budget. Those debts paid for things in the past — perhaps an infrastructure upgrade in your area.
If the pool of money isn’t big enough to cover every expense, it goes into debt to get the money — just like you would to buy a house.
None of this means the government has a huge amount of credit card debt with 20% APR. It’s not irresponsible thing to spend more than you have if it will propel growth, resulting in more future income. Businesses do it all the time. Debt is used as a useful tool at this scale — which is very different from how debt works (or how people use debt) for individuals.
Regardless of deficit or debt, your tax money is still funding many things directly. Whether or not you agree with those things is one thing — but your comment didn’t really touch on that. Personally, I’d like to see less defense spending and nationalized healthcare.
But I’m still “happy” to pay taxes which allow me to live in a very stable country.
There are consequences to endless spending. The U.S. will not rule the world market forever, and part of its eventual burnout will be due to the untamed level of government taxation and spending. History is precedent, and we owe it to the future to not leave them with the ashes.
It would seem people would rather leave the next generation with comical amounts of debt then admit that at some point someone will have to pay this off when the US isn't the biggest guy on the block
The question is similar to why we vote. Individually, my vote is meaningless. Collectively, our votes move the needle.
Things rarely turn out exactly the way any individual wants, but that's the nature of any collective action -- taxes, voting, picking a restaurant to eat at, etc.
If this was true we could survey the United States and approximately match the tax allocations.
Medicare is not a well-liked system by almost anyone on it. Gen X, Millennials, and now Zoomers see no purpose in social security (they most likely won't get it). Military tax consumption is insane. The federal law enforcement agencies take quite a bit too.
I'd imagine when surveyed Americans would generally be negative on most, if not all, of these. Yet, for some reason they allocate to these things. Is this the "collective action" you are supposing exists? Because it sure sounds like theft-by-fiat to me.
> In any case, I am a strong believer in making a decision and following through with it (within reason), rather than stagnating forever in indecision and research. Some research yes, if necessary, but at some point you have to pick a direction and go.
I am the type that struggles with the indecisive behavior and had to pay serious opportunity cost because of this type of behavior. I struggle with indecisiveness even with seemingly small decisions such as picking a restaurant for dinner.
Any pointers on behavioral trainings to change that? In this context, even if I have (and I typically do) have also "gut feeling" about something, I struggle to follow through.
I'm afraid that I don't, and in fact that despite my belief in the concept (decisiveness!) I definitely struggle to adhere to it sometimes as well. Your example (where to go for dinner) puts my in mind of my wife, who does much the same and I get to watch her agonize and stress over tiny decisions that in my mind have no consequence whatsoever one way or another.
In fact, I do think that being married to her forces decisiveness from me, in many cases. But for others, I just don't empathize very much, even with her. I'm quick to point out that it's a tiny difference that won't make any difference in the long run, but it doesn't seem to help her at all (I'm not insensitive as this may sound, I really am trying to help and she knows that).
That's the only thing I can say though - maybe analyze why you think this is an important decision, worth your time of consideration. If you can't think of a good enough reason, then say to yourself, "it doesn't matter", and flip a coin. Maybe literally, if that helps.
If I may, I'd recommend first try to understand why you can't take a decision, is being afraid of making a mistake for example or is there something else?
Then, you can start practicing with mundane decisions like picking a different flavor of ice cream instead of your usual one, try to identify decision like that example that have no consequences and don't overthink it, just decide. The only way to change this is to retrain yourself to break the association.
That is the reason why all the monotheistic religions had fatwa on debt. And you can see how countries that are further moving away from the religious values at different points in histories also immediately adopt a debt based economy.
I am baffled at the Fed messaging. A year ago Powell's keynote said the inflation is a supply side problem due to "transitory" issues. How does raising interest rates with "demand destruction" help supply side inflation due to war and chip shortages?
A simple example: If your mortgage or credit cards debt or car loans cost more due to higher interest rates, you are going to have less money left over to purchase other products.
This will make you less likely to want the new expensive Iphone, especially if you were going to finance the purchase, so as Iphone sales plumit, there will be less of a chip shortage since supply now meets demand.
OK so what happens if the chip shortage lasts longer (due to war and commodity prices)and with plummeting sales and corporate earning (which will reduce tax receipts as well) the economy will enter recession? So then what is the game? Do Fed keep the economy in recession? Or do they start QE again?
Why would they start QE? Fed rate is at 4% right now, there's more than enough room to drop rates if an issue occurs.
Given the data however, its unlikely to happen. We're currently at record employment levels. The expectation is for the rate to keep going up to maybe 4.5% next year, and finally that's when inflation is quelled, and we taper off rates sometime next year.
Of course, we need to keep up with economic data and see if these rate hikes have the desired effects.
> Why would they start QE? Fed rate is at 4% right now, there's more than enough room to drop rates if an issue occurs.
Right but that will also increase demand and induce more inflation, no? So Fed will be perpetually stuck, in theory at least, to find a balance in their dual mandates.
Its like monetary policy is only a tiny piece of overall policy.
The big guns is Congress, not the Fed. Possibly the President if you consider things like averting the big Railroad Union strike last week (which would have certainly caused more inflation as shipping costs could have gone up).
Lots of little fires happening around the country. The fed has one lever: interest rates. Congress / President has the other levers.
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Still though: we watch the Fed because the prime rate has a large effect on the value of investments, especially in the question of stocks vs bonds. Its important for the individual investor to follow.
The goal is equalize the demand with the supply. Keeping with the example, the hope is to see just as many iPhones sold, already limited by how many chips are available, but not with people fighting over them outbidding each other with higher and higher offers to obtain one.
A recession will occur if they overshoot, however.
There is too much demand. If we could make all the stuff we can afford to buy, then we wouldn't have inflation. But it is how we get $12 for a medium #1 at Burger King, which is flipping insane.
Eh, not really. Because you're buying the house on a loan but not buying iphones on the loan.
When you choose to get a loan you're pumping a few hundred thousand that was leveraged into existence into multiple industries that gets distributed into the economy, that gets distributed to hundreds of people working.
When you choose just to just buy an iphone, that's $1000ish your spending of your own money.
Most people spend more money on cars and houses than Iphones. If interest rates cause you to you buy an Iphone instead of a new house or car you've probably contributed to lowering inflation more than increasing inflation because there's one less person bidding up the cost of houses and cars, plus cars have chips in them.
You're incentivized to put your money in savings because of the interest you can accrue in a savings account since interest rates are up for those accounts.
" A year ago Powell's keynote said the inflation is a supply side problem due to "transitory" issues."
This reminds me a lot of the 2008 crisis when Bernanke told us that everything was just fine until banks started collapsing. Personally I think the Fed has turned into a political institution that keeps inflating bubbles until there is no way out. I can't see much wisdom or foresight in their moves. They seem constantly behind the curve and instead of smoothing out business cycles they make them more extreme.
There have been very few “swings” at all. This response is case in point for “so measured it is probably not enough”. Policy has been incredibly stable in the last decade, and then we had a crazy pandemic and the fiscal policy response, in hindsight, was wrong.
I don't even think it was wrong, it just went on too long. The US had an excellent recovery, but because Congress didn't want to pass automatic stabilizers, and they had a hard time passing laws, they set long expiration times- and the last stimulus bill went on too long in retrospect.
That's kind of laughable. Most people who know the very basics of economics knew this was coming after printing and dumping that much money into the economy early in the pandemic. They increased the supply of money with nothing of value backing it, which diluted the total supply's value.
Those guys have been calling for runaway inflation since 2011 though. So we ignore those permabears.
Calling "inflation" for 10 years in a row is basically boy-who-cried wolf. No one believes you, and when you're finally "correct" about it, its not because you had any analysis, its because inflation inevitably occurs in a boom/bust cycle.
Broken clock correct twice a day + Boy who cried wolf syndrome. I still won't be listening to the permabears / runaway inflation guys even with today's market conditions.
Is the doctor who tells you for 30 years in a row that you should stop smoking because you will get lung cancer, only right in the year when you actually develop the cancer? Was the doctor 'crying wolf' for 29 years?
When the Fed printed a Trillion dollars in November 2008 through QE1, and those permabears think crazy hyperinflation will occur immediately, yes, we ignore them.
When they say inflation will occur in QE2 in 2010, and those permabears think crazy hyperinflation will occur immediately, then yes, we ignore them.
When they say inflation will occur in QE3 in 2012, and those permabears think crazy hyperinflation will occur immediately, then yes, we ignore them.
When they say inflation will occur in QE4 in 2020, and those permabears think crazy hyperinflation will occur immediately, then yes, we ignore them.
Now its 2022, the Fed has been Quantitative Tightening for a year to deal with the inflation signals we're finally seeing. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being effectively destroyed by these policies.
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So yes, the Fed is finally acting on the inflation issue. But only because the data shows it is finally a problem. We don't just take the permabear crowd word immediately, we move when the data shows an issue. Not before.
There's some people who are just noise and are irrelevant to the discussion, unfortunately. You figure these things out over the years.
> We don't just take the permabear crowd word immediately, we move when the data shows an issue. Not before.
Following the data means you're inevitably running after the facts. Running after the facts inevitably causes feedback loops. I'm sure those feedback loops were tuned correctly to not blow the whole thing up, right. Right? RIGHT??
This just isn't true. https://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/inflation/ is a poll of the top economists in the country and they certainly didn't all agree that the level of inflation we now see was a certainty.
Fortunately, we can rely on continued immigration to increase the labor supply and control wage inflation and that's a good thing. The price spiral with flat wages will result in a generally reduced quality of life for the American worker though. I think that's a bad thing, but nobody in power has cared about that for the past fifty years[1] so why start now?
The sad truth about a lot of Canadian universities is this - they are entirely funded by foreign money (through international students). There is a specific university in Montreal named Concordia University which was so overwhelmingly structured to use this scheme it is almost called "Passport to Canada" back home - over 50% students there are international students. They charge the international students almost 5 times than normal Quebec students.
So it would not shock me if this whole thing is just aimed at taking the eyes off the simple fact that most universities education (esp graduate school) has become a way to legitimizing second degree slavery by bringing in foreign students with outrageous tuition scheme and at the same time providing someone graduating from Canadian university with little incentives since the wages are so low from TA. As long as there are countries with poor conditions people want to come here it will go on like that. Like all the things these academic elites do, there is no incentive to actually end discrimination.
This is part of the problem that the parent comment is referring to - putting all conservatives under the same umbrella. Tea party is different from most Trump voting working class. Conservatism in recent era has taken a very distinct shape and failure to understand this by elites have led to this very phenomenon the comment you replied to is referring to. How do you explain a non-negligible part of middle of America who voted for Obama voting for Trump?
As far as I am concerned, Tea Party acted in a capacity within the institution. The stuff we have seen under Trump including leaking secret military orders just to bring Trump down shows an absurd amount of collusion of institutional bureaucracy, media, corporate powers and security forces (such as FBI) which was unthinkable a decade ago and erodes the core values and credibilities of those institutions. For example, a decade ago FBI was a revered institution by conservatives who would go at length to support its over reaching acts and its the liberals who would question them. How did the table turn so bad that FBI is now actively being used as a force to silence opposition arresting anyone they like in the middle of night in their underwear while inviting media camera crews?
> How do you explain a non-negligible part of middle of America who voted for Obama voting for Trump?
The labor movement always had a socially reactionary underbelly. My hypothesis: it wasn't bad economic times that activated Obama-Trump voters. It was, rather, good economic times that triggered those voters to flip from labor-first to identity-first. The tension was always there. This is why the Tea Party fizzled and why Romney couldn't activate the switch -- reactionary blue collar folks knew intuitively that those movements weren't "on their side". But by 2016 a bombastic billionaire (also obviously not on their side) could be excused because the economy was good enough to at last put identity first.
I grew up in a suburb that flipped and my wife is from a mid-sized non-metro city that also flipped. Obama Trump voters are substantially all of our social circle.
A lot happened, but honestly, "youtube's algorithm and super effective conservative media" is probably the best explanation in over 1/2 of the roughly 3 dozen anecdotal cases. It's just pure identity.
Some blame Obama for outsourcing and the GFC, but that's mostly noise. First of all, the major factory that closed wasn't outsourced. It closed because the company was wildly mismanaged, and was not replaced with a foreign factory. Also, this happened five years before the GFC and Obama's election. Most of the folks in our circles remained employed throughout that GFC and all of them did very well from 2010 on-wards.
They're currently all doing very well financially; far better than the late 20s/early 30s city dwellers whose conversations I overhear in the coffee shop. Red America can afford single family homes with big yards, saves for retirement, and just generally lives a very comfortable life unimaginable in blue cities. With jobs in law enforcement, trucking, and in hospitals which don't require even an associate's degree. It's really the American dream -- graduate from high school, six weeks of training, and you're making enough to afford a house and kids and retirement within a couple years.
The resentment and utter hatred of liberals is visceral and real. Pretending it's economic is bullshit cover. Tell someone sharing a bedroom in NYC that their counterpart with less education, who works fewer hours, and lives in a SFH with a pool hates them because of the unfair economic spoils of the former.
Also, the economy was doing extremely well in 2016. Economics is now top-of-mind, but it didn't even come close to motivating them to vote for Trump in 2016. That was pure identity politics.
> You can argue either side to this, and make a good case.
Here is an argument. Fed is a thief. First it recklessly bailed out all the toxic banks and derivatives in 2008, then kept the interest rates low for too long propping up the asset prices, then basically printed money as if there is no tomorrow, and then the moment middle class started to see wage growth they gave the asset owning class opportunity exit with big margin as they retired and then started raising the rates. End the Fed.
I think Fed lost any credibility it had left after Greenspan. Now it's just a steep slide down. I mean, rates should have been raised in 2011. Remember when Powell tried this whole saga he is trying to do now back in 2018, there was a repo market shock and they had to backtrack. There is no way Fed can maintain its dual mandate of maximizing unemployment and keeping the inflation low. Because right now the US economy is about to enter a recession in response to a 0.75% interest rate hike so far, which is far less than what we need to do to curve inflation of 8%. A recession certainly means loss of jobs and there goes their dual mandate. There is no soft landing here as they are aiming hard, just as a year ago the inflation was not transitory yet they kept saying it.
If a Fed agency clearly does not satisfy its mandate that it was set out for, then what is the process of ending it? Can the public bring a Supreme Court case against the validity and thus force congress to dissolve? I mean we can't surely expect our incompetent representatives of congress to force any action when there is a revolving door between their sponsors like Citadel/Goldman/Pimco and Fed officials they advise and appoint.
Big caveat: we don't actually know, because it hasn't been studied, because human monkeypox is very rare. Still, some conjecture:
You're very probably immune. Recovery from smallpox almost always meant life-long immunity and re-infection was basically unknown when it was common. The orthopoxviruses are known to have a lot of cross-immunity. People who get cowpox are immune to smallpox, and vice versa. The classic smallpox vaccine used widely in the 20th century was just a very mild strain of pox (genetically somewhere between smallpox and cowpox, and of uncertain origin now lost to history) which causes almost no illness in humans.
As Lowe notes in the blog piece, statements of about 85% protection from the smallpox vaccine are going around.
I haven't seen anything in particular about the protection resulting from a full-blown, non-attenuated infection, but as I understand it from discussions apropos another pathogen of fame lately, the rule of thumb is more comprehensive and lasting immunity from going through the disease as compared to vaccinations.
That is, I believe you ought to be in great shape compared to most of the world population.
What was it like? If it can be meaningfully described...
Not total but some protection. The last article I read suggested a fully vaxxed person still had a couple of lesions (how it was detected). Definitely better than a full blown attack.
> If you have financial assets worth over $2 million, you may have to pay a one-off exit tax calculated as a capital gains tax as if you sold all of your assets on the day you renounced.
Do you have to pay capital gains taxes on anything over $2 million or wholesale all capital gain?
> You have to attend an exit interview at your nearest U.S. consulate or embassy.
I believe the exit interview is to ensure that you understand the consequences, sign papers that are motorized, make sure you pay your taxes, etc.
I'm sure they can reject your exit if you haven't finished paying taxes owed or you seem under duress or mental impairment. But absent that (or maybe similar reasons you wouldn't let someone sign a contract) I don't think they can.
With 33T debts and deficit spending being the norm, why should I pay taxes? How much of what we pay as taxes actually go to fund "the country"? Part of me still wants to believe I as a responsible citizen should feel good that I pay my taxes but it increasingly feels to me a very small part of what we pay as taxes actually go to things that matter and ultimately deficit spending will be the only way by the time I would be entitled to enjoy some of the social security benefits to fund them.
I live in a state that does not have income taxes.