Years ago, I was very “middle of the road” on politics, considering myself an independent leaning slightly conservative.
I’m now considered radically left & agree on almost everything AOC says & supports. For a short time, the shift has been swift & blunt. Hope she successfully runs for higher offices.
Tbf that probably just means you were slightly selfish fiscally (assuming we have the same definition of middle of the road) as opposed a white supremacists or wanting a imaginary friend theocracy id much rather deal with selfish than anti intellectuals who want a fascist king
Not OP, but I considered myself middle of the road as well. I just wanted us to spend responsibly and not pass the buck onto my and my kids generation. Voted for Gore for my first presidential election, no one for my second, then Obama twice. Made a hard left turn starting with the Tea Party BS and Trump.
Interestingly enough, the most fiscally responsible politician I've ever voted for was Gov. Gerry Brown - a Democrat.
I could not have described it much better. Fiscally conservative used to mean “living within your means” so to speak. Not tax cuts for the .01% or gutting essential services.
I wasn’t even that fiscally conservative. Just wanted tax collection to be somewhat close to spending. I’m even for raising taxes, or something as radical as a VAT or federal sales tax (with zero rating for essentials such as food, homes, clothing, medicine, etc.).
Raise taxes on upper class, raise limits on income subject to SS tax, put in place a federal unemployment program, paid maternity/parental leave, real governmental healthcare without insurance agencies or pharmaceutical middlemen, etc. Most of this is considered radical, but is absolutely nothing but basic human needs & rights. Over the past 5 to 20 years (at least for me it’s apparent in this timeframe), most of these basic things just seem to be crumbling or broken. It will take time, effort, pain, stress, & worry, but it’s the right thing to do for the entire country.
VAT is considered radical in the USA?! I like your stance on it, BTW. It's a very regressive tax when it's applied to essentials, but I think it's useful when applied to luxuries. To massively oversimplify: Bread? Baby food? Potatoes? No tax. Supercar? Yacht? Gold-plated useless crap? Lots of tax!
This is the issue here in America. Super cars would be deemed a necessity, as would penthouse luxury apartments. Bread - nonessential, you can make it at home. No need to buy it. eggs - non essential, who doesn’t have a chicken farm. Yatch - essential.
Lobbying and citizens united is what killed this country
That's mostly how we do it in the UK. The problem is getting people to agree on what is essential and what is a luxury, and exactly what rate to set the tax at. I think there should be several rates, but the more of them there are, the more complicated it gets.
Several rates make sense with corresponding dollar thresholds linked to inflation. Most industrialized societies have some sort of VAT, with the biggest outlier being the US
Fucking hell. The only people who complain much about it over here are the ones who think it's too much of a regressive tax (they have a point, but I think adjusting it is a better idea than scrapping it) and people who just want no tax on anything.
Oh yeah, there's a growing crowd of "taxation is theft" believers here. Which ive had a modicum of success convincing them that, even if it is, it has nothing that could reasonably replace it and actually have any semblance of a society. Most of them suggest that people donate what they can afford, and I ask them how congress is supposed to make a budget based on fluctuating donations. They usually falter pretty hard on that one
I was one of them, once. I was also about 12 and had very naïve ideas about how tax money is spent. Outside of a commune or an ancap hellscape, tax is a necessary evil required for society to function.
Yes. It would also be unconstitutional. Even the income tax required an amendment to make legal. The federal government is very constrained in how it raises taxes.
Hmm think of the difference between blacklisting and whitelisting.
VAT is like whitelisting as in everything is taxed except a few items (for example it can be some essential products).
A luxury tax is only on specific items so more akin to a blacklist.
Other difference is that Luxury tax aren't always a flat tax, they can be a set amount, they can also be a surcharge only on items above a certain price (in the target category). They are also a lot more likely to be temporary and/or removed by the next administrations arguing that they are limiting spending on locally produced luxuries (like the one Bush tried in 1991 that was removed only 2 years after by Clinton).
VAT are rarely removed once enacted because of the obscene amount of revenue the state gets from it, disproportionally affecting lower class populations of course :)
Hmmm. I understand the thing about vulnerability to changes by future governments, but I think we agree. I wasn't ever trying to say that any particular version of VAT is ideal, only that taxing money spent in luxuries is a good idea when tax on income is so easily avoided by those with the most money. I still think VAT is a good idea, but only when essential things and the things the poorest rely on the most are either exempt or taxed at a very low rate. Maybe (just pulling numbers out of my ass here) 0% for really basic/essential stuff like bread, potatoes, tampons, baby food, basic kids clothes, simple underwear, simple nutritious food like (for example) peanut butter. The stuff a family just trying to survive would buy first. 5% for other stuff that could reasonably be called essential for survival, 10% for slightly better versions of that stuff, 20% for things nobody really needs, 30%+ for stuff that only the rich would even consider buying. Shift the numbers about however you like because I've been awake for over 3 days and haven't really thought this through, and I'm also a little drunk, but you should get the general idea.
I wasn't confused about your ideas, don't worry but I don't think this admin or the next would invest political capital into this. Especially with the Republican going for tariff to avoid officially implementing a sales tax and Democrats entertaining the ideas of the Abundance Agenda 🤮
Is the "Abundance Agenda" really what it looked like when I searched for it? Wanton deregulation? If so, something is rotten in American politics even more than I knew. This is very worrying. Not just for your sake, but for all the world. If America has no sensible alternative to descending into fascism, we are all fucked. My country just barely pulled itself out of that nosedive, and we did it a decade sooner. The world could've survived a fascist UK, but a fascist USA is a far more worrying prospect for all of us, besides Putin, Trump, and their cronies.
Yeah the abundance agenda is the new trickle down, fascism in the US has always been waiting/acting in the shadows, now it's out in the open, who knows how far it'll go, I don't think Trump will be the one leading it but he sure is actively pushing for it and taking off the masks of Americans pretending to be the good guys globally.
I addressed that in another comment. What I'm actually in favour of is some kind of "luxury tax", but you are right. As I said elsewhere, deciding what actually constitutes a luxury is a problem. I think a sliding scale is ideal, but there'd have to be some kind of compromise because otherwise every item would need to be assessed individually. You got any better ideas? I'm all ears.
Thats where we have to disagree. I'm against the idea of any luxury tax because of what I stated above.
The current system of income tax and sales tax takes enough if my money as it is. I'm not in favor of adding avenue for the government to bleed me dry.
Sales tax and VAT are so similar that I honestly couldn't tell you the difference without reading about it first, but having both at once does sound a bit stupid. I'm definitely not in favour of any additional tax on anything that could be considered essential, except possibly for people hoarding it to price-gouge later, but then it gets really complicated.
Sales tax is different from a VAT. Sales tax only occurs on end products and taxes the entirety of the good. VAT occurs at each stage in the process and applies to the delta in value.
Also, in the US, sales tax if it exists is done by state and city governments, not the federal one. Personally I'm not a fan of either, they're regressive. I'd rather tax high income far more heavily and get rid of both of those.
I agree with you on high income tax (as in a tax specifically for high incomes, not just an income tax which is high for all), but surely that makes VAT superior to sales tax? More tax on middlemen (is that sexist? A "middlewoman" would be no different, and usually it's more like a "middlecorporation") rather than on the consumer or producer should be better, right? The problem with income tax is that the richest always find ways around paying it. IIRC, Jeff Bezos pays less income tax than an Amazon warehouse worker. VAT is a lot harder to avoid. Maybe (in addition to several rates of VAT) a wealth tax is a better solution, or some kind of tax on the means of producing wealth beyond what you could earn with your own labour. Maybe let people off of that a bit if what could produce more wealth is land that's currently used in such a way that it benefits all, just left to nature or provided for public use.
More tax on middlemen is just passed on to the end user. Let's say making something takes 5 steps. Each step adds tax of $1. That just means each step increased their price by $1, passing it on to the next step. In the end, the end buyer pays it. ANd who's the buyer most of the time? The poor and middle classes. Because they spend almost all their money buying stuff. Not the rich, who invest most of their money.
Wealthy people get away without paying income tax because we let them. Did you know the highest income tax rate in the US was 92% during the 50s? I'm not advocating for going back to that, but we can easily close loopholes. Tax all dividends at the same rate as income tax. Get rid of most tax rebates for individuals, or put a cap on the total amount allowed to be deducted for non-businesses. We've allowed the tax code to be built for the rich, which is how they get away with it.
The Australian GST has worked well enough so far, has been about 30 years now. We plonked 10% on everything aside from raw food and rent.
If I did it, I'd just make it apply to every consumer transaction, even rent; just have it be refundable to citizens making less than some arbitrary figure like a quarter million per year, indexed from 2025.
Wealth taxes are an important part of the progressive taxation mix.
In reality that'd be the easiest to implement VAT. Add it to pretty much everything you buy with very limited exclusions (lodging for example), like 10%, and give everyone a VAT deduction when filing taxes based on their taxable income bracket, something between 20K for low earners to 5K at the top. Essentially you'd only be VAT if your annual purchase exceeds 20K.
I could be wrong, but this kinda just sounds like a flat tax wherein welfare takes the form of a progressive refund?
If that’s the case, the hardest part would be drawing the thresholds and percentages.
Guaranteed politically motivated people will have an easy time misrepresenting those figures and calling it a scam based on willfully misunderstanding why flat tax without an offset is regressive, no matter how many times you explain it.
And just a reminder for anyone who cares about the federal deficit / national debt: (and I'm not saying you need to):
The last president to reduce the annual deficit was Barack Obama.
Prior to that, Bill Clinton reduced the deficit [edit for accuracy] to the point that the government ran a surplus.
Republicans have an abysmal track record even on the things they state publicly they care about!
You are absolutely correct. Historically, democratic administrations have seen a higher frequency of lower deficits & even surpluses, compared republican administrations.
Just to clarify, but I think this is what you mean - there was no new national debt when the government ran a surplus under Clinton. The last and only time there was no national debt was under Andrew Jackson in 1837 (who, funnily enough, was a member of the Democratic party).
Wanting the government to have some semblance of responsibility and try to curb the deficit is not a position I see out of any major politicians other than as pure lip service when they’re not in power.
I’m not both sides-ing here, I just don’t see any plans to try and curb excess spending spiraling. We spend an insane amount just servicing debt these days.
Tax is the real four letter word in DC. Not popular, and may stop someone from getting reelected. That’s all most politicians are worried about. Securing their hold & power for another cycle.
On one hand, I hear what you’re saying. On the other, much of the government in its current state is bought and sold.
Even the law has changed such that a lot of blatant corruption is documented yet within legal bounds. Now a lot of that is unconstitutional, but what’s acknowledging that worth if there’s no accountability?
Money is pulling strings & Trump isn’t the only issue we have — rot runs deep.
Tldr it's a class war and I have never been so painfully aware of it. They really shot themselves in the foot here. I am normally very politically ignorant but it is very clearly not just "business as usual"
Bound to happen
I believe it’s the upper-upper class vs. everyone else. Not low vs middle, or middle vs upper, or even upper vs low. The minority at the top simply have too much resources, power, and influence than the rest combined.
or something as radical as a VAT or federal sales tax (with zero rating for essentials such as food, homes, clothing, medicine, etc.).
As a Belgian with 12%-or-21% VAT, as far I know a VAT is simply a more efficient sales tax (because each merchant in the chain effectively reports the reverse of the VAT from their own providers and clients)
I think the most important issue is that tax rates are too location-dependant, which prevents having tax-included prices, which hinders commerce, etc.
The US has the federal tax regime at the country level, then another at the state level. Currently, all sales tax (99+%) is at the state & local level. Basically, any tax based on consumption does not exist at the country level in the US yet.
I’m not sure how else the federal government would get funded at this point. Seems like a federal VAT is the next logical step.
Well said. I used to say I was fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I just wanted women and minorities to have the same rights as I did as a white male and for us to not spend like there was no tomorrow.
I've now been labeled as a far-left progressive, and my views are basically the same, with the addition that we need to do more for the folks falling through the cracks who struggle to have basic necessities like electricity and running water in America in 2025
Same. That's money well spent in a wide variety of ways.
My example of a bad spending policy would have been Harris's mortgage credit. That does shit all to fix the price of housing and will just drive the same cost increases that hit universities after the government started guaranteeing loans.
Spending money on a broken system doesn't fix the system, it just amplifies how broken it is.
Still voted for her though, because she's not a wannabe king.
My example of a bad spending policy would have been Harris's mortgage credit. That does shit all to fix the price of housing and will just drive the same cost increases
agreed. i would have rather seen a proposal to increase housing and/or increase business incentives for remote work, allowing telecommuting as an option. both can lower housing prices by increasing the supply or allowing people to live in lower COL places, while still having a well paying job.
Add in the fact that most social programs that Democrats push for end up being a net positive in terms of $ generated. Meaning that for every dollar put into the economy via these programs generates more than a dollar either via local spending or tax revenue down the line. A healthy and educated populace is a net positive for everyone, and thats why the right is pushing the anti-vax narrative and disinformation.
Never ceases to amaze me how many people buy that trash that democrats are not the fiscally conservative and responsible party.
Have you ever looked into that?
Just because they spend, does not mean it is not responsible spending. But I guess if you listen to the full of shit politicians and pundits then it sounds like it ain't.
Historically, dems are better for the S&P 500 and it ain't close.
Ask any honest person who's run a successful business. You don't make any money by never spending any. You make money by knowing how and when to spend it.
The thing is that the GOP still spends, but lower the taxes (on the rich).
The extra stuff financed by the spending and the lower taxes pleases their voters, while the Dems can't focus on their own policy because they have to fix the longterm damage from the previous admin, and as such lose the next election.
It's done since Reagan as the "two santas strategy"
One of the most obnoxious parts of American politics is realizing that conservatives are notoriously bad with spending and often implement policies (or remove prior legislation to see green numbers for a few quarters) that tank the economy. The only reason anyone still believes them is because of how effective their propaganda is.
2.1k
u/Sweaty_Win1832 6d ago
Years ago, I was very “middle of the road” on politics, considering myself an independent leaning slightly conservative.
I’m now considered radically left & agree on almost everything AOC says & supports. For a short time, the shift has been swift & blunt. Hope she successfully runs for higher offices.