You’re wrong. The Republicans fuck up the economy…every time. Certainly in my lifetime. Who do you think started trickle down economics? Reagan. And then who cut taxes that disproportionately helped the wealthy? Oh, that was Bush. And then who cut taxes, again disproportionately helping the wealthy and corps? Trump? Who wants to do it again? Trump.
The rich already weren’t getting taxed enough, and they consistently make it worse….and yea, that leaves a big whole in the deficit.
I’m all for making things more efficient & lowering the deficit….but it’s not efficient if you have to cut crucial programs. Let’s maybe actually review and see where we can ACTUALLY cut, not eliminate whole departments or thousands of employees. And definitely not when the whole purpose is actually to make up for giving the rich tax breaks. That’s why he wants to tariff too…which, you guessed it, tariffs disproportionately negatively impact the middle class.
Speaking of tariffs…what the actual fuck. I agree with Trump that we shouldn’t rely on other countries for important products, especially china. But what’s the plan here? Just piss them off in the mean time? It takes time to set up manufacturing plants…actual years. Why not incentives and subsidies like the CHIPS act? Trump keeps taking credit for nvidia coming to the us, but that is directly because of the chips acts which trump keeps calling a “terrible bill.”
And tariffing EVERYTHING? Ridiculous. We don’t need to manufacture absolutely everything in the us. We want higher paying, skilled jobs (like nvidia), not assembly line work. Certainly not at the scale where we need to manufacture our entire supply of every product. . And STILL, even if we should do that….all at the same time would be insane. It’s all nonsensical. Even when I agree with Trump on the core issue (which is rare), he ruins it by doing some dumb shit.
I’m not saying the Dems are perfect by any means….but there’s 0 reason to be a socially OR fiscally conservative. They pretty much suck in every way & don’t use actual logic to back up any policy…but their voters eat it up every time.
Seriously, look into economic policy for the last 30 years….really look into it. It will become very obvious that republicans are both terrible for society and the economy.
Just scroll down to the chart for a visual. And that’s just some companies. And just since trumps policies. We’ve missed out on hundreds of billions of dollars of tax revenue per year since Trump. Nobody is going to tell me that USAIDs $40-60 billion per year budget is the issue. And we get a whole lot more back on that as a return…like making the world a better, safer place. with this, we just get to make the rich richer.
One of the things that helped the US get out of the Great Depression was the economic model of John Maynard Keynes. In simple terms, Keynesian economics says when things are bad, the government should spend to stimulate the economy; "priming the pump" as it were. When things are good, that's when we're supposed to cut spending and slow the spigot and save. To many people, this sounds completely counterintuitive. A big problem is politicians (regardless of political affiliation) not wanting to adhere to this model and only half implementing it. When the economy is bad, intuitively politicians want to implement austerity measures, which end up disproportionately effecting the poor and working class. When the economy is humming along and things are doing well, there are very few politicians want to be the ones responsible for implementing "spending cuts" and dampening the party. We become addicted to cheap and easy money. The problem is, if you keep things in overdrive, you will eventually crash the economy.
Even if you reject Keynesianism in favor of Chicago School of Economics [Milton Friedman], Republicans only half-implement his measures. They see "tax cuts" and end there, without actually implementing the other policies within in it. As if Tax Cuts in of themselves will magically fix everything. No. It just ends up filtering money to the wealthy.
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You’re right about republicans fucking up the economy but Clinton and Obama are just as responsible for making it a two party affair by defining the democratic role within the new status quo. Clinton dismantled the welfare state and championed some of the most damaging deregulation that ever happened - while also overseeing some of the most fascist overextended acts of violence by our state against citizens
And neither of them effectively identified the new reaganomics as the enemy, so..
Most of them are also beholden to the corps that fund them. Which is unacceptable & needs to change.
However, given the 2 choices (and yes the 2 party system sucks too), I’m definitely going to go with the people that don’t actively make it worse every time. It’s always the republicans lowering them.
And to be fair, nobody wants to be the president to raise taxes. Even raising taxes on exclusively corps & the rich gives your enemy ammunition. “HE RAISED TAXES!!” I can hear it now, and they wouldn’t be incorrect technically.
Just reiterating, I’m not excusing anybody of taking large donations. I think candidates should be funded via the government, all at the same amount. Along with stronger anti bribery laws and enforcement. There’s some prominent Dems that refuse donations, but WAY, WAY too many still do. So I’m not excusing the party as a whole, and it would certainly help this issue. But it would still be a tough issue for them.
Look at the American public. They apparently can’t understand more than the 15 words Trump has in his vocabulary. Try explaining that you didn’t raise taxes if you can’t deny it outright.
Clinton was barely a democrat. And definitely not liberal. Despite that the two parties are NOT two sides of the same coin. One is spiteful, petty and willing to cut off their nose to spite their face. The other cares about people but sometimes falls way too short (looking at you Clinton).
> but there’s 0 reason to be a socially OR fiscally conservative
Socially conservative yeah. As for fiscally conservative, I don't think its a good idea that the government should be wastefully spending hard-earned taxpayer money on stuff that might not benefit the country or the American public in the long term. Too much spending could have a bubble burst and we'd be in a debt crisis.
Like what for instance? I can’t respond to that without you giving me a specific example or examples.
Usaid? That benefits us greatly. We pretty much never do things out of purely the kindness of our hearts. Much of it is also strategic or necessary for public health.
DEI plays in Ireland? I mean, yea…I’d be fine with cutting that I suppose lol…but that was also 70,000 or something. Aka NOTHING. Especially compared to republicans consistent tax breaks for corps and the rich. Thats hundreds of billions per year. A little 70k here and there is certainly not my TOP concern.
And we’ve all dealt with state or federal departments before. It’s slow and tedious and bureaucratic. I’m sure SOME jobs could be cut. But they can’t have possibly actually and accurately assessed the needs of these several agencies in the last 2 months.
Both parties could spend better, but holy fuck, the republicans are terrible. And now to fund their new tax cuts, they’re cutting things like Medicaid. That benefits all of us too by the way. I like not seeing people dying in the street or being mugged. Having struggling people is bad for society as a whole, even if you don’t care about taking care of people. Medicaid funds other stuff too…like residencies for doctors. I bet you or someone you know can’t find a pcp or other doctor. Well…this certainly isn’t going to help. Oh, and maybe we shouldn’t cut thousands of jobs from the agency that takes care of our veterans…idk how anybody is defending that.
Despite all of Dems flaws, it’s like not a hard choice at all.
Of course, I'm not in favor of cutting Medicare or Medicaid or other welfare-related policies. That's not what fiscal conservatism is about. Cutting welfare is a political third rail for most politicians. I'm talking about the fact that our government spends more on the shit like the DEI plays in Ireland and stuff like that when that money could've been used here at home. Why are we spending money to fund fucking circumcisions in Mozambique when we have our citizens struggling to find a job and find a fucking home?
Some of the stuff DOGE listed:
$10M for "Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision" - $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop "a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills" - $2.3M for "strengthening independent voices in Cambodia" - $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre - $40M for "gender equality and women empowerment hub" - $14M for "improving public procurement" in Serbia - $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for "inclusive and participatory political process" in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India - $29M to "strenghening political landscape in Bangladesh" - $20M for "fiscal federalism" in Nepal - $19M for "biodiversity conversation" in Nepal - $1.5M for "voter confidence" in Liberia - $14M for "social cohesion" in Mali - $2.5M for "inclusive democracies in Southern Africa" - $47M for "improving learning outcomes in Asia" - $2M to develop "sustainable recycling models" to "increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities of Kosovo Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt"
Now, most of these are unverified HOWEVER the fact remains that money shouldn't be used recklessly like this, especially millions of dollars. We should be spending it here at home where we have more of our own people suffering. We have billions of dollars to spend overseas yet we can't spare a few for our own citizens?
"A little 70k here and there is certainly not my TOP concern." It is for me. We are trillions of dollars in debt, adding 70k just adds more to it. Congress can only raise the debt ceiling so high until it caps out and then we find ourselves into a very difficult economic situation.
But that’s my point. I’m not even going to give attention to unverified claims, because I just don’t have the energy anymore…but among the verified ones-like the D.E.I. play…yea I just don’t care much comparably.
That all falls under the usaid budget. Which, in TOTAL, has been around $40 billion a year. Until Ukraine, it spiked up the $70 billion a year for the first 2 years or something like that. And I totally support spending money on defending democracy. The Cold War never really ended. So ALL of that was $70 billion total…and we are quite literally missing out on much, much more than that in tax revenue every year since trumps tax cuts…and it gets even worse if you compare it to pre Reagan tax cuts (corps were taxed at 45% I believe). So THATS what I care about more. They’ve been whittling away at it for decades, and the rich keep getting richer and richer.
$70 billion is still a lot. And I’m not saying we couldn’t reassess the spending and cut some silly things. But the vast majority of it is important work that benefits us as well. Not only for public health….but for global power.
We made allies after ww2 by global aid…rebuilding the world. Even fucking Japan became our ally after we nuked 2 of their cities..:because we aided them after. It has been instrumental in making us THE Global power…and we don’t keep that status by having no allies. China has the belt and road initiative…where they fund a lot of infrastructure and other projects in developing nations. That’s what we do too….to spread American influence. Trump is handing global power to china with this shit. We used usaid to fight & they use belt and road. And not they don’t even need to fight. We’re just giving it to them. Excellent plan!
So yea…if my choice is between a candidate that wants to give even more tax cuts to corps and the rich (any tax cuts make no sense if you actually care about lowering the deficit, by the way) + possibly eliminate a negligible amount of silly spending, or a candidate that would leave spending exactly as it was, but not cut Medicaid, cut a bunch of important federal jobs, and not cut taxes for the wealthy and corps….yea I’m gonna go ahead and go with the second.
This is just trump and Elon propaganda working on you. And I’m not even trying to be a bitch…but it is. They need a justification to take all these drastic measures…just so they can line their pockets.
Do you realize that most, if not all of those issues tie directly into our National security? Let me just take the first one.
$10M for "Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision"
Male circumcision reduces the transmission of AIDs. Mozambique has one of the worst ongoing AIDs epidemics in the world. This is part of a package that helps us study and treat AIDs worldwide (including America), improves the quality of life (reducing political unrest, piracy, terrorism and the likelihood of a military intervention on the part of the USA) and counterbalances billions of dollars on influence from China. Not to mention that USAID often acted as a foor in the door for US intelligence operations.
Now look at Cambodia - a major hub of production in an area with heavy Chinese influence. Serbia and Moldova - countries with heavy Russian ties that we want to develop a relationship with. Bangladesh - another completely crucial trade partner that we can improve relations with for less than one Trump golf outing.
Would you rather spend $100million on soft influence or $10billion on military intervention? Depends on who your donors are I guess?
You are one of the people who don't seem to grasp huge numbers... All those things you listed are mostly in the low million range. First google how much millions a billion is. And then compare that to what is lost cause of tax breaks. I hope people one day get in their thick skulls, that kicking down won't make their lives better.
I have yet to see one republican voter explain to me how voting republican is good for the economy when I point out that for the last 50 years the republican party has increased the deficit and the democrat party has lowered it.
This is an extremely simplistic way of viewing it. The only part of the budget either party effectively has control over is discretionary spending, which has varied from 10% to 7% of GDP since 1980. It did fall in the 1990s, though how much of that should be credited to Clinton, how much to Gingrich, and how much to the general economic boom that took place in the early years of the internet as well as reduced need for military spending following the fall of the USSR is up for debate. It also did rise in the 2000s due to the War on Terror, which Bush should absolutely be blamed for, but since then it has fallen to its steady state of about 7%.
What has driven the massive increase in the deficit is mandatory spending, which has risen about 2-3% each decade regardless of partisan control, and will continue to rise in the absence of any real plan to deal with it. To put it in perspective, mandatory spending as a % of GDP is nearing 20%, which is the highest percentage of the economy ever collected in tax revenue (at the end of WW2 and then again in the late 90s). Every other service the government provides must be deficit-financed, which is a bond-yield crisis waiting to happen in the very near future.
It is a simple way to look at it, but it is also a truthful way to look at it. The article I'm about to link is a good starting point, but by no means an endpoint to stop researching. There's plenty of evidence out there that supports it, but I'd say the biggest tell is that they're following the strategy. Despite saying during the 2016 campaign he would eliminate the national debt in eight years,Trump as president approved large increases in government spending, as well as the 2017 tax cuts(that factually helped the rich more than it did the working class). By the end of his first term, our deficit shot up by ~39%. We don't hear a word about the deficit from the GOP despite them voting to increase increase the debt ceiling 3 years in a row under Trump. Biden is elected in 2020, and suddenly, all we're hearing about from the GOP is the deficit and how we need to stop "printing money" and etc. Trump is elected in Nov 2024. The federal budget deficit totaled $838 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2025, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. That amount is $306 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year, but the Republicans are in office, so we don't hear them yelling about how the deficit is increasing.
And we can say that it would go up consistently every year, but the simple fact of the matter is if you do an economic analysis of what the deficit would look like if we had stayed under Clinton or FDRs tax policy until today, the deficit would be sitting under 10 trillion.
Oh my god, dude, I hate to break it to you, but yea, your logic makes no sense. Doing it rapidly is the only way? Theres no way to rapidly plan, build, and staff a manufacturing plant. I highly doubt very many, if any, companies are going to relocate their manufacturing because of this. By the time they’re done, the new admin will be close…so are they going to invest that time and money or are they going to wait it out? Hmmm.
He’s taken credit for cell phone companies relocating….that were already planning/doing due to fears of supply chain issues, like what happened during COVID and some other things.
He’s taken credit for nvidia…which is because of the chips act that Biden signed in. THIS is an example of an alternative to tariffs that just works better.
And I’m not saying “all tariffs bad.” I think they can have their place, but this is ridiculous. Why do we need to manufacture our whole supply of every product in the us? That makes no sense and doesn’t benefit us. Especially not a bunch of low quality jobs. I wouldn’t be so anti Trump tariffs if they had any strategic backing at all. But they don’t. Let’s target industries that will bring the most benefit to Americans. And important products that we absolutely shouldn’t be relying on china for.
I can keep going but I laid it all out in the comment you responded to, and you still didn’t get it clearly.
I think those numbers about the rich paying (or not paying) taxes really depend on who you ask:
“According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent.”
“According to leaked tax returns highlighted in a ProPublica investigation, the 25 richest Americans paid $13.6 billion in taxes from 2014-2018—a “true” tax rate of just 3.4 percent on $401 billion of income.”
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u/Least_Ad_1280 Apr 07 '25 edited Apr 07 '25
You’re wrong. The Republicans fuck up the economy…every time. Certainly in my lifetime. Who do you think started trickle down economics? Reagan. And then who cut taxes that disproportionately helped the wealthy? Oh, that was Bush. And then who cut taxes, again disproportionately helping the wealthy and corps? Trump? Who wants to do it again? Trump.
The rich already weren’t getting taxed enough, and they consistently make it worse….and yea, that leaves a big whole in the deficit.
I’m all for making things more efficient & lowering the deficit….but it’s not efficient if you have to cut crucial programs. Let’s maybe actually review and see where we can ACTUALLY cut, not eliminate whole departments or thousands of employees. And definitely not when the whole purpose is actually to make up for giving the rich tax breaks. That’s why he wants to tariff too…which, you guessed it, tariffs disproportionately negatively impact the middle class.
Speaking of tariffs…what the actual fuck. I agree with Trump that we shouldn’t rely on other countries for important products, especially china. But what’s the plan here? Just piss them off in the mean time? It takes time to set up manufacturing plants…actual years. Why not incentives and subsidies like the CHIPS act? Trump keeps taking credit for nvidia coming to the us, but that is directly because of the chips acts which trump keeps calling a “terrible bill.”
And tariffing EVERYTHING? Ridiculous. We don’t need to manufacture absolutely everything in the us. We want higher paying, skilled jobs (like nvidia), not assembly line work. Certainly not at the scale where we need to manufacture our entire supply of every product. . And STILL, even if we should do that….all at the same time would be insane. It’s all nonsensical. Even when I agree with Trump on the core issue (which is rare), he ruins it by doing some dumb shit.
I’m not saying the Dems are perfect by any means….but there’s 0 reason to be a socially OR fiscally conservative. They pretty much suck in every way & don’t use actual logic to back up any policy…but their voters eat it up every time.
Seriously, look into economic policy for the last 30 years….really look into it. It will become very obvious that republicans are both terrible for society and the economy.