That's actually more than I expected.
> President Trump seeks to shift the government’s reliance on income taxes toward taxes on imported goods. Still, tariffs contribute a relatively small 3.7% of overall federal revenue, compared with 51% for the individual income tax.
We really need to close large ccorporate tax dodges as well. Too many smaller companies pay 35% rates while the Apples and NVIDIAs pay a fraction of that rate. There's apparently plenty enough corporation money sloshing around to spend trillions on GPUs for AI in the US.
This does not follow. The figures for "trillions" come from estimates for what will be spent in the next few years, not amount actually spent. Moreover while tech companies have initially funded their AI investments from their cash piles, they're now tapping debt markets to fund that growth, so the fact they're spending "trillions" doesn't imply they're evading taxes.
Now normally this might be put to some sensible use, perhaps building infrastructure, but since this revenue is being used to offset huge tax cuts for a tiny group of people determined to turn around and use the capital for (let's be real here) speculation it's a net negative.
In the end we're going to look back at this chapter of 'Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation' and say "Well obviously those idiots should've see that coming."
If your definitions are used, then literally nothing actually brings in money. It just moves it from one place to another.
20 billion ... gone.
Another 15 billion will go to soybean farmers to bail them out. And so on.
So in their own language, these tariffs are merely domestic transfers of capital and do not 'bring in money.'
You’re trying to make a political point by changing the definition of words.
I may agree with your point, but pretending like tariffs don’t generate income that bring down the deficit is not the way to argue it. It just convinces people you aren’t arguing in good faith, or don’t understand simple math.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/08/29/nx-s1-5522457/tariffs-trump-t...
So your argument seems to be “We have yet to see whether these new tariffs are legal and therefore whether the income will be able to be kept.”
That’s a far cry from saying tariffs don’t generate income for the government, which is what I understood you to be saying.
So instead of taxing our wealthier citizens and corporations more, we tax them less and instead tax everyone by raising the cost of imported goods.
In 2023 it was something like 16 %, with variations due to moving money across country boundaries if i read that correctly.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/0000320193240...
That would envigorate the domestic economy and enrich our citizens.
Though I would prefer a 0% income and capital tax, and we move to a pure land value tax and rent tax system.
So I guess you want some level of corporate tax? (it's the same for why there are large sales tax in developing countries; sure they are less efficient than income taxes, but lots of people evade those)
That's why there are specific IRS regulations for this[1]. "Company cars" basically disappeared as a result. Moreover contrary to what you imply, corporate taxes don't really solve this issue either. Corporate taxes are paid on profit, not revenue, and expenses like "work vehicles" or private jets aren't taxed either way.
That's basically what tax on profits are supposed to cover, because a tax on dividends only doesn't cover buybacks.
>tax shares being sold
UK has this, and it's widely considered be economists to be anti-growth.
Most countries (including the US) have signed global minimum tax rates at this point. Effective tax rates (either directly or via clawbacks) are theoretically 25%.
Of course, I am not enough of an expert to know if that is happening in China. I somewhat doubt it.
Even the UAE has joined at this point.
You also seem to be conflating investment for profit (GPUs for AI, for example) with income. Capital outlays of this type are almost always financed (see recently Nvidia, OpenAI + AMD, etc. deals). None of the large players are self-funding AI on that scale right now. This is why OpenAI's burn rate is so catastrophically high.
"That is largely because the main drivers of spending kept rising: social programs, including Social Security and Medicare, and interest on the public debt, which topped $1 trillion by one measure for the first time."
And how much money did DOGE spend on its quest to save nothing by trashing scientific research?
And maybe, just maybe, the answer is to both raise taxes and reduce spending?
On a dollar-by-dollar basis, regardless of economic station, _every_ American has seen a combined discretionary + non-discretionary increase in benefits since 1980. The group that is less advantaged is the upper-middle class, which has seen relative stagnation.
Mention of Social Security as a major driver of the budget deficit is a red flag you're reading something by someone who's ill-informed on the topic, or else they're deliberately bullshitting you.
> Intragovernmental debt holdings represent federal debt owed by Treasury to federal government accounts—primarily federal trust funds such as those established for Social Security and Medicare—that typically have an obligation to invest their excess annual receipts (including interest earnings) over disbursements in federal securities.
> Debt held by the public represents a claim on today’s taxpayers and absorbs resources from today’s economy, meaning that when an investor buys Treasury securities it is not investing that money elsewhere in the economy.
> Intragovernmental debt holdings reflect a claim on taxpayers and the economy in the future. Specifically, when federal government accounts redeem Treasury securities to obtain cash to fund expenditures, Treasury usually borrows from the public to finance these redemptions.
Or to put it simply the excess contributions are lent to the Treasury who uses it for general government expenditures. When it’s time to pay it back the Treasury can either pay it with tax revenue assuming it has excess or has cut spending elsewhere or it will be forced to borrow it. The latter is generally what happens.
I wouldn’t be so quick to call people ill-informed on this subject if I were you.
We halt all spending on Social Security tomorrow. Great, wonderful. Buuuuut... that debt still exists and nothing whatsoever changes for the budget deficit. [EDIT pedantic nuance: technically it might let us spread repaying that debt over a longer period, but the debt itself remains identical, unless we decide we're just gonna let it sit there and never pay anything against it, which is identical to nullifying it, which, see next paragraph]
Unless we're prepared to nullify debts we've already incurred, in which case, why single out the debt Social Security owns for that treatment?
> I wouldn’t be so quick to call people ill-informed on this subject if I were you.
Nah, gonna continue until I see any reason to stop.
Because it's the biggest slice of the federal budget pie, and currently it goes to the segment of the US population with the highest average net worth.
Whether you think it's right or wrong, it is a massive chunk of mandatory spending. Combined with Medicare, it's close to 40% of the entire budget, and it is ultimately unsustainable.
It's not spent out of the general fund. The only—only—effect Social Security spending has on the budget is that for part of its spending, it calls in debt the general budget already owes it when it spend its money (which is invested in government debt). That money came from a dedicated, separate source, and wasn't generated by deficit spending, but by actual income. That money bought US government debt, so we owe that back, and that repayment is the only part of any of this that affects the budget.
[EDIT] To boil this down for international readers or people who just haven't ever bothered to learn the super interesting (LOL) way Social Security is structured:
1) Social Security is funded by the majority of the money that comes out of workers' paychecks under the "FICA" heading (some goes to other benefits-related stuff, but most of it goes to Social Security). This is a static proportion of ~15%, not progressively bracketed like ordinary income tax. About half is paid separately by your employer, typically, but people filing as independent contractors (form 1099) pay the whole shebang. This tax also phases out abruptly at a certain level (I forget exactly where, something like $200k for an individual tax filer I think) which means it's actually not just not-progressive, but rather extremely regressive (i.e. it preferentially targets income dollars with the highest marginal utility, not the lowest)
2) Under certain circumstances, but mostly when you get sufficiently old, you can start to draw benefits (payments back to you) out of Social Security. These benefits are (basically) adjusted for how much you paid in. Paid in more? Get more back.
3) For a long time Social Security ran a surplus from their FICA income, so that money went into the Social Security "Trust Fund". This money is not available to the general budget. The law is structured such that the excess money couldn't just be spent on other stuff.
4) ... however, you don't really want money just sitting around inflating away, you want to invest it. Plus, sure would be nice for the rest of the budget to access that big tempting pile of money somehow, if you're a politician and kinda an asshole (but I repeat myself). So, the trust fund bought government debt.
5) Social Security is now deficit spending, because we have a fuckload of old people drawing benefits from it, and not enough young people funding it to balance that out. That means it's spending down the trust fund (ITS OWN MONEY that it ALREADY COLLECTED). This requires cashing in some of those IOUs.
6) "Well when it runs out of money it saved up, won't that mean that spending becomes deficit spending against the general budget?" Nope! Not without changing the law, anyway (which opens up practically infinite possibilities, so it's kinda pointless to introduce to a discussion of "how does this work?"). What'll happen is the SSA (Social Security Administration) has to cut benefits until payments balance with income (from the FICA tax).
How is the amount of money paid as interest dependent on the measure used? I can understand different interpretations of some expenses as capex vs opex, and similar other questions. But interest?
A bond with a face value of $1000 means the government has $1000 of debt regardless of what is paid for the bond.
The coupon payments represent the "interest" on that debt - the $20 coupon means the government is paying $20 of interest per year.
Paying below face value doesn’t make the difference "interest." It simply means investors are buying the bond at a discount, so the government receives less cash upfront in exchange for repaying the full $1,000 at maturity. Bonds differ from traditional loans in that their market price can fluctuate, but the debt obligation remains fixed at the face value.
In practice, the government's accounting labels the discount as an "interest expense", so it still gets captured as interest in the budget.
(And yes, coupons pay 2x yearly, but they are quoted on an annual basis; I would receive two $10 payments.)
Of course, in the 15 years since the fiscal situation has gotten worse, so any of the recommendations it made then would need to be more severe now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_Fiscal_...
Medicare is another story, and until the US has a come to Jesus moment on single payer healthcare and confronting the regulatory capture in healthcare it will only get worse.
100% true, if you're operating in sane-world where anything makes sense.
Here in insane world, my pet theory is that, given another year (maybe two, they might wait until after the midterms, assuming they hold on to congress) we're going to see an attempt to nullify the government debt owned by Social Security by converting it into some convoluted scheme involving crypto-backed-by-the-stock-market or something. Ta-da, debt reduced, deficit reduced (by the amount of interest on the debt owned by the trust fund)! Plus sooooo many opportunities to steal.
This'll kill the program stone-dead, but it'll take a little while. Kinda like how they already killed Obamacare by removing the individual mandate, and they're just waiting for the death-spiral to hit bottom so they can declare the program a failure and proof that we should never try to fix healthcare in any kind of actually-decent way again.
Haha. Last time it took the great depression and intense economic pain for americans to snap out of it and actually build a slightly better world (New Deal). I wouldn't expect it to take anything less this time around. Europe required 2 world wars and over 100M dead.
But, I agree about the political suicide. I unfortunately don't believe anyone is even going to attempt reform after how successful the Republican party's attacks on Obamacare were. People will just conclude there's no reward for trying.
> elimination of over 100 programs, the elimination of over 250,000 federal jobs, the consolidation of over 800 agencies
Didn't solve all budget issues, but was a legitimate and meaningful effort to reduce waste. Polar opposite of DOGE.
> Anything we can actually do we can afford
I find it increasingly paradoxical that supposedly, our collective economic capability routinely increases (implied by ever growing GDP), while our budget situation looks ever grimmer.
Here's a good explanation I found quickly via Google, I'm sure there are others: https://medium.com/mydex/we-can-afford-what-we-can-actually-...
Wasn't Clinton the last president to balance the budget?
First, the goal of the tariffs was to reduce US deficit spending.
Then it was reducing debt. Isolating & containing China. Dissuading them from invading Taiwan. Replacing the income tax. Retaliating against Europe, Japan, & S. Korea for unfair trade practices. Compelling other countries to buy American. Onshoring manufacturing. Forcing foreigners to pay a premium to access American markets. Forcing Canada & Mexico to get illegal immigration & narcotics trafficking under control. Punishing Brazil for persecuting Bolsonaro. Compelling third countries to accept expelled immigrants.
Then they pivoted to: Art of the Deal! He's deliberately making unrealistic demands as an intro offer.
Which is it again?!
If tariff revenue is rising, and the economy hasn’t shrunk (yet), and DOGE has returned money (recission later being authorized) then some money was clearly generated.
Alternatively, Doge could have been totally ineffectual and tariffs returning nothing, but this article seems to indicate otherwise.
This means that less money then planned was spent. Against a null hpothesis, that indicates that the situation is "better" then doing nothing at all (at which point, the rise in government lending costs, the out of control benefit costs, and all of the other stupid crap that has been festering out there since Bill Clinton won the white house for ridiculing Bush for raising taxes comes home to roost.
I'm solidly in the never-trump camp, and maybe there was an argument made after the paywall, but this feels like an ideology in search of a headline.
1. Doge isn't free. They have staff with expenses which haven't been accounted for in your argument.
2. Cancelation of forward facing contracts shouldn't affect the immediate numbers. But it's like laying off the entire company; you're going to record a record Q4 with all those sales but no expenses however come Q1 good luck for the company.
Although people have posted links so you can read the article [1] which largely points out that spending is up by $220 billion. Which is about 2.2 trillion worse than Doge promised.
Trust me. DOGE has done a great deal, just none of it is reasonable or sane from our perspective.
kelnos•2h ago
I mean... duh? This shouldn't be news to anyone paying attention. DOGE was shock-and-awe theater, and a means to shake up agencies and gain access to sensitive information. At best, they saved a few tens of millions of dollars, which at that level isn't really worth the effort.
The GOP always cries about spending and the deficit, but when they're in charge, they spend just as much as Democrats (if not more!), and, to make things worse, cut taxes (usually for the rich more than anyone else). The largest part of the federal budget isn't the discretionary spending, anyway.
And the effects of the tariffs have been obvious to anyone not drinking the MAGA Kool-Aid.
downrightmike•2h ago
mikestew•2h ago
walkabout•2h ago
A space alien newly arrived on Earth and looking at just actions taken, GAO/CBO reports, and the actual historical data, would conclude that, at least since 1980, Democrats were the ones who cared (a lot) more about the budget deficit than Republicans. The notion that voting for Republicans is the best move for a voter whose major issue is the deficit, is just marketing.
toast0•2h ago
IMHO, the GOP wants to reduce government spending for ideological reasons, but doesn't generally have any particular thing it wants to reduce spending on, and certainly doesn't want to take the blame for cutting any particular programs. So they do a tax cut, because voters like tax cuts; and chances are Democrats will be in power when the deficit / debt gets big enough that it needs to be addressed. Then Democrats will have to do the poor PR business of raising taxes or making specific cuts. If Democrats make specific cuts to reduce government spending in order to make the lower taxes work, the GOP furthered their ideology and got good vibes for lowering taxes, while the Democrats got bad vibes for cutting programs.
I don't like it, but it works for the GOP, so I'm sure we'll see it continue.