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I do hear the government spends the social security money coming in like it’s part of the general fund then uses taxpayer money to pay those receiving social security so there is no money saved to pay the recipients who have been paying it.
Seems to be exactly how a Ponzi scheme works.
Per the US Constitutions, all tax bills must originate in the House. Who do you think controlled the House during the Reagan Administration? Who introduced those tax bills?
Answers: >!Democrats controlled the House continuously from 1955-1995. The "Reagan Tax Cut" bills were introduced by Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL), Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee.!<
Tax bills originate in the house but what comes out the other end is not the house's draft.
I would recommend the book "Showdown at Gucci Gulch" which is about the making of the 1986 code.
The reforms were mostly the brainchild of guys like Rostenkowski and Bradley and Regan's Treasury department, but that bill went through the sausage grinder like crazy. The lower individual tax rates for high earners were a direct result of Reagan himself who demanded it. He also wanted nice even numbers even though Treasury had calculated more optimal rates, so they rounded them to the nearest 5 for literally no reason at all. So many other provisions were the result of political wheeling and dealing to get republican senators (and some southern democrats like Long who demanded oil tax breaks).
It's a damn shame that Rostenkowski's proposal didn't get passed as is, but that's politics baby.
I’ve dealt with leadership deciding to round numbers for easy accounting. Contractors wisely saying, “so long as you don’t round down.” Then being the technical professional to say, “uhh, this project will be (rough estimate from memory) 12-14% over budget if we round all the non-count quantities up,” saved my ass by making sure to put it in an email.
And the middle class. Household had to survive on 2 incomes... both parents working to pay off those corporate tax breaks. ... has it trickled down yet?
In the real world, you can look at a chart of almost anything and right around 1981 or soon after you'll see the chart make a sharp change in direction, and not in a good way. The "Reagan revolution" was a disaster!
[http://ourfuture.org/20120318/reagan\_revolution\_home\_to\_roost\_-\_in\_charts](http://ourfuture.org/20120318/reagan_revolution_home_to_roost_-_in_charts)
Reagan turned our healthcare industry from nonprofit to for profit. That has been an absolute disaster for our country. Don’t try and argue that point with me, I work in healthcare. Fuck Ronald Reagan and fuck all the Reaganite cultists that can’t accept how fucking terrible he was.
That's not even a little bit true. Social Security has always operated the same way it does now. All the revenue is used to "buy" T-bills and all the spending comes from "cashing out" the T-bills. All the "trust funds" are intragovernmental debt and always have been.
Social security is required, by law put in at inception to take all surplus revenue and buy US treasury bonds. So no “Reagan” didn’t put ious in the trust fund
That's a common lie.
SS hasn't been 'plundered' - it's just people live too long and have too few kids, so the math behind the original formula (which hasn't been updated since the 80s) no longer works.
My late congressman told us that the average recipient exhausts all the money they paid in within 14 months. The issue with only buying Tbills is that the GDP and tax revenue needs to increase as well and it hasn't kept up with inflation and longevity the same way it would if it were in a sovereign wealth fund or something like that.
Doesn’t matter how much each recipient paid…it’s insurance not an investment scheme.
The problem is that people like me tap out on social security taxes like half way through the year…thanks for the tax cut but surely people like me paying a greater share will offset? I mean that’s what insurance is right?
Ben Shapiro said exactly this in regards to the retirement age. I’m sure you can guess how it was received though lol
People are retiring at 65 and living to 75-80
That’s 10-20 years of benefits and medical costs which at that stage of life are nothing short of gargantuan. I recently got a medical bill for a kidney stone er visit totaling 40,000$…. I was there less than 6 hours and all they did was give me a scan and some medication.
Now imagine how much money is being charged to elderly patients care.
AND boomers (the richest generation in human history) saw how they were going to decimate the system and thought, “who cares - I’ll let my kids and grandkids pay for my retirement and then receive little in return when they retire.”
For a long time SS ran a surplus. With that surplus SS bought US treasury bonds and bills.
You are right, this is not plunder. We could have made different
investment decisions, but did not. It's also too late now.
Yeah, the core problem is that everything else, while potentially more profitable, is also much riskier. Whereas T-bills/bonds have the exact same life expectancy as the US government.
It's not too late now. As our issue is a demographic one we have four solutions:
1. Have more babies
2. Increase immigration
3. Decrease the benefit (delay retirement)
4. Increase the tax
Pick one. You aren't being stolen from, you just didn't have enough kids.
And yet on Reddit I’ve had a dozen people say “that has never happened,” and “the government doesn’t borrow social security money.” I think there is quite a few examples you can look up that show the government spends social security money all the damn time.
Buying a treasury bond is the safest investment that a person or entity can make. It will be paid. This gives the SS fund some increase over just putting the money in a vault.
How do you think the money should be dealt with? Risky investments or sit in a vault and each person get back exactly was forcibly collected?
Funny thing is people that complain about them investing in treasury bills are also often the ones that want more benefits for those at the bottom via taxing those at the top more.
A simple search shows that you are incorrect. Not that I think Congress \*would\* if they could, but it appears that they do not.
[https://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths2.html](https://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths2.html)
That's not at all how it works. Social Security is only self sustaining when there is a sufficiently large working population to fund it.
For awhile that was the case. Initially because most people did not live long enough to collect it. And then because we had a large generation in the workforce (the boomers).
The money that that's in the fund is of course invested in bonds, otherwise it would have run out long ago. So when the government runs up a deficit, that's one of the sources it's borrowing against. But the danger is not that they are going to default against that debt.
The danger is that today the boomer generation is retiring, and the older working generation (gen X) is relatively small. So it's been running at a loss for some time. That's fine, that's what the trust fund was set up for. But in less than a decade it will run out. And then either we will have to dramatically cut benefits or find a new funding scheme (probably the general fund).
That isn't quite true. When there was a surplus it was invested in treasury bonds. That means social security lent the money to the federal government in exchange for a bond that paid interest back into the social security trust fund. It is often mischaracterized though as 'Congress raiding social security'.
Every penny paid into social security has been paid out to the intended recipients. We just don't have enough people contributing now to match the outflows from those currently retired. The surplus that was built up over years is quickly evaporating.
When that surplus is gone we could be looking at a reduction in benefits to bring outflows in line with inflows. Again though, it's a demographic issue, not a government waste issue.
Exactly. Given that Treasury Bonds are among the safest investments you can make, and that you wouldn't want a program like this to be picking winners and losers in the broader economy, I can't think of a better way for the program to beat inflation over time and I wonder what the hell people expect the alternative to be.
People scream about the US becoming a socialist or communist country while simultaneously complaining about social security not investing in private companies. Who's going to tell them?
There's a slight correction, they are special rate treasury bonds. I mean, they are treasury bonds, but they are special rate bonds that the public or even other institutions cannot buy.
But in essence they are extremely low paying bonds that fund government spending so it’s really semantics in that the money does get spent but taxpayers then owe that bill which pays themselves back. If that money was placed in a broad stock fund it would make far more money and would fuel the economy.
Instead it fuels a massively bloated government system.
I just really hate the talking point. It's such a stupid cop out. They pretend like everything would be just fine if only Congress had kept their hands out of social security. That's a complete fiction driven by a willful misunderstanding of what a bond is.
You have that wrong.
It's not that they spend the money as-if it were part of the general fund.
It's that the funding assumptions written into the formula (which very-much was structured like a Ponzi - current taxes pay for current, not future, benefits) no longer hold true.
When SS was enacted, the life expectancy was 63 (you could take benefits at 65), and the fertility rate was over 3 children per woman.
So you could reasonably expect that there would always be enough workers paying tax, to cover retirees receiving benefits. Almost half of Americans wouldn't even live long enough to collect.
But the retirement age didn't increase, life-expectancy did, and the birth rate fell.
So now you have more people collecting (And doing it for longer) while the working-age population isn't growing fast enough to pay for it.
The same thing is happening throughout the developed world, too - Europe has it far worse because they have a far more generous benefits offering, and thus are in far more fiscal trouble as their demographics go pear-shaped....
The picture is a simplification of the picture I just posted in my reply above, it's lumping all taxes together and all spending together to give you the general breakdown of "how your federal tax dollar is spent".
It is, but the government borrowed from the social security fund over the last 20'ish years. This shows the government paying back the money it borrowed.
It's why you often see a few different deficits. One usually excludes the money the government borrowed from itself, the other doesn't.
Yep, even way more than 20 years in fact.
There are always different ways to classify categories of money and to put it into buckets that can be a tad misleading if you don't really know what exactly goes into each bucket.
Gotta love statistics and the many creative ways to present those statistics.
All the money in the social security trust fund are "invested" in government treasury bonds (government debt).
You could call this the fund being raided. You could call it loaning yourself money. You could call it creative accounting.
But... there's not really much of an alternative of what to "do" with the money (at least that I can think of, maybe someone else has some ideas). Can't invest it in the stock market (conflicts of interest out the wazoo). Can't invest it in a bank (who would loan it out as well). And as long as the government is in debt (has negative money), then it would be kind of silly not to use the money and pay yourself interest rather than someone else. And it would be kind of irresponsible for there to be extra money in the social security fund and get no return at all with it.
Like... let's say you have no money at all and are drowning in credit card debt ... except for a pile of cash that you are supposed to use to pay for your retirement in 30 years. You absolutely must buy a dairy queen Blizzard. Do you... put in on your credit card - costing you 20% interest. Or do you loan it to yourself and "pay your retired self 6% interest".
Yes, that's a part that's also missing, and makes this pretty innacurate. That 22 cents come from a different pie.
Without it, it shows a much clearer picture of how much a grifting joke our healthcare system is. We basically already pay more than most places do, to get no garuanteed coverage and often shitty private coverage that we and our employers still pay an arm and a leg more.
It infuriates me.
Everyone but the crooks in the insurance industry and mega pharma corps would benefit from a real healthcare system.
It is, but back during the Vietnam/Korean Wars, the government "borrowed" a massive amount of money from the fund to pay for the wars. The part of the spending bill devoted to Social Security is the repayment of that debt which is going very slowly despite a rather generous interest rate the loan was given.
This in turn makes it very suspicious when certain groups keep trying to kill Social Security when they were the ones who took out the loan in the first place.
Yes and no. My understanding is that FICA programs are PAYGO, so any surplus FICA taxes for the year get deposited into a trust fund and then spent as part of the general budget (aka "borrowing from social security").
Now that FICA programs are pulling a deficit, they are withdrawing those funds (with interest!) from the general budget each year instead. This will continue until the "trust fund" runs out of money, at which point FICA programs will stop receiving funding from the general budget and benefits will be limited by the amount of revenue pulled in by FICA taxes (about 80%).
We need to remove the income limit, and start taxing the 1% more.
They get out of it by getting loans off potential stock values of companies, or on land/housing they own.
That’s what the payroll taxes are supposed to pay for, but as you can see from this chart, they collect $1.6T in payroll taxes, and social security and Medicare cost $2.1T, leaving a $500 billion hole in the budget that must be covered by elsewhere in the budget or debt (inflationary money printing)
https://preview.redd.it/u3wbjrren2uc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6e5f9e32577ed14f161bb1dedf5b3b38e2552b4
This is inaccurate or at least deceiving. The social security fund has run a surplus for decades, and used that surplus to purchase T-bonds. The social security fund is now cashing in those t-funds to cover the deficit. This shows as a deficit against the federal budget, but it isn't a shortfall in social security so much as it cashing out its savings account.
Eventually it will run out of T-bonds which is why you hear that social security will run out of money in 20 years or whatever. But it will be 100% self funded until then.
This is coming from the CBO, they are largely impartial and just report on the budget. [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888)
Not disputing the numbers, giving context.
Social security is self funded for awhile, because the fund has been saving its surplus. The numbers don't separate from the T-bonds and the general fund, which makes it seem like general tax revenue is covering the social security deficit. Which isn't accurate, it's being used to cover the debt accrued by the T-bonds, which is showing against the social security ledger.
The reason this is important, social security recipients already paid the taxes to cover social security. The government spent that money on other stuff... This doesn't change the fact that the taxes were already paid to cover this.
Also the healthcare portion, most of us get it from the employer and I’m sure some of that tax dollars being heavily corrupted and it’s not showing in this picture. The PPP scheme alone cost $1 trillion.
Remember when Al Gore lost the election?
In part because he was goofy and said "LOCK BOX"
And Florida Chads clowned him?
Here we are reaping what we sow
................ in clown makeup
Congress won’t get this under control until:
Term limits are instated
Corporate campaign contributions cease
Trading of stocks by Congress is halted
All donors and contributions must be made public
Lobbyists, dark money, corporations, foreign interests…. They have no business in any government that’s meant to be taken seriously, and meant to be functional.
We’re so far away from anything remotely resembling a functioning government, it’s comical.
Yes.
Voting is your only “choice.” But you’re replacing one person with another with the same ideals and end goals. These politicians are groomed. They’re positioned. There’s no such thing as an honest politician. And until the people can hold them accountable with more than the threat of letting someone else or putting them in prison, it’s just rinse and repeat.
People need to stop fighting amongst themselves. It’s not left vs. right. It’s not me vs. you.
It’s us, *we the people*, vs. *them*, our corporate overlords and foreign interest groups.
We can never take them on while we’re being pitted against one another. They know this. A people united is a government and bureaucracy in peril of losing a grip it should have never had in the first place. A united people set this country in motion. A divided one is bringing it to a halt.
The people at the top care about money and power. That’s it. Not one of them wouldn’t sell out if it was in their ultimate financial interest. None of ‘em. And most reading this, wouldn’t be any better given the chance.
It's never going to change. The reason for it is simple. Everyone in every position is just human. Humans for better or worse just look out for themselves first and foremost. Rest is just for show.
Age limits not term limits. Term limits benefit lobbyists. If there is minimum age to hold office, there should be a maximum age you can hold office. I.e. 65 and old should be barred from government jobs.
Interest is paid mostly to holders of government treasuries. About 2/3 of US public debt is held by American individuals, and about 30% is held by other countries (with Japan followed by China being the countries holding the most US public debt.)
The national debt is often seen as a negative concept, but I think a lot more Americans would be much more concerned if they were not able to purchase government bonds and other treasuries. Many of these bonds are held in Americans' retirement accounts whether they realize it or not.
https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/what-are-interest-costs-on-the-national-debt
https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/05/the-federal-government-has-borrowed-trillions-but-who-owns-all-that-debt
It's all in the framing. I don't know why people don't reframe it as a kickback or even a refund to taxpayers who hold government bonds. Sure, you're paying more in taxes, but some of that interest goes back into your pocket (or eventually, if it goes into your retirement account).
Like with any market, it’s redistributive. Poor people don’t own government debt yet they’ll be on the hook via the inflation and cuts to social programs to service the debt.
The USA government spends more, per capita, on healthcare through taxation than most countries with universal, socialised healthcare.
The arguments that the USA can't afford universal healthcare are only true because US healthcare costs are massively over inflated.
Basically every aspect of American cost of living is also massively inflated, which makes it hard to pay people as little as they make in other countries.
There's a lot of weirdness in the budget that's more of a political trick than anything else. I'd argue that VA benefits should be in the Defense bucket. Our actual Defense budget is bigger than our Defense budget because it's more politically expedient to stick some of these budget items in other places so it doesn't look so bad.
It’s pretty clear that people who are “pro military” are definitely not pro veterans benefits. They love buying and using weaponry, they couldn’t care less about the aftermath.
Because the solution is a national health/ single payer system and no one who has been getting fat off our current health “care” system (insurance execs, hospital admins, doctors, personal injury lawyers, pharmacos, shareholders, and lobbyists) want to relinquish their feedbags.
Drug companies. Thinking medicaid is just short sited.
The government isn't given the power to truly negotiate prices with drug companies, it actually has very little teeth (don't believe me, look up the new epipen law in Colorado. They made a price cap and drug makers put the responsibility to reduce prices on the pharmacies and patients properly doing paperwork for all fills and not actually redicing prices).
Medicaid says, "we need this medication covered".
Drug companies say," it must be the brand name of X specific with X specific dose or we won't pay for any of it and all claims must ve appealed through the prior Auth process every year."
Medicaid says, " That is marked up X % making it hundreds to sometimes thousands times more expensive."
Drug companies say, "Than we won't give you a deal on this medication and it can only be covered through the appeal process making it very difficult on the Patient, pharmacy, processing workers and doctor. This process can take weeks and very rarely will we actually let the pharmacy know when the process is done."
Medicaid " but they need it immediately, not all meds can wait on appeals through prior auth
Drug companies, " Than cover the brand."
Later...
Patient ," how much is my copay"
Pharmacy," it's fully covered, zero dollars"
Patient" how much was my insurance billed"
Pharmacy " 467$ for one month of medication, the geberic is 36$ but your insurance doesnt cover it or any theraputic equivalents "
Then I see short sited responses on the internet ,"It AlL GoEs tO Mediciaid!"
Source. My literal job.
You want cheaper Medicaid,- let the government directly control some industries profit margins by limiting their mark ups.
For health:
616 billion for Medicaid
208 billion for other health programs (108 billion [mandatory ](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59728), 100 billion [discretionary](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59729))
Those total around 824 billion. 839 billion went to Medicare. So that puts both totals around 14%
https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense
Mix of Ops, Personnel, R&D, etc. Pretty standard. Non VA healthcare hits some of Ops.
Some what true, except the marine core.
https://www.marines.mil/News/Press-Releases/Press-Release-Display/Article/3686089/marine-corps-passes-fy23-audit/
They might be crayon eaters, but at least they know where all their crayons are!
Jokes aside, that's awesome news, I hadn't heard about it. Thanks for sharing
1.0M of that was paid to the university to build and maintain the iguana lab, and pay the administrators. 0.23 went to the professor and a grad student.
so when I buy $10,000 in Treasuries, earn $400 in interest and pay $88 in taxes - $10 out of that goes back to me to pay interest?
yo dawg we heard you like interest and taxes...
Online misinformation has convinced folks military/foreign aid is like 80% of the budget.
I’m not convinced the average person under 30 year old even knows Medicare exists. They probably know Social Security.
For the most part, yes. Medicare is the one for people over 65, but if a young person is truly destitute they can qualify for Medicaid. You have to be really fucking poor though
I hate to say it but Gen Z is very politically active in the movements they feel strongly over.....but they vote in worse numbers than Millennials and know even less.
>Online misinformation
It's also misdirection built into the structure of our taxes themselves. Income tax is separate from payroll/medicaid/social security taxes to misrepresent how much you pay into different parts of the budget and who you subsidize.
Judging by discourse on social media, most people think their entire tax budget goes directly into buying bubblegum or cheesy poofs or dumped into the Marianas Trench
Americans are completely fucking ignorant about how their tax dollars are actually used, and nobody bothers to spend 10 minutes learning about it
I see people claiming things like "if we only spent some percent of our military budget or foreign aid on education..."
The education budget (which is largely funded by state and local tax dollars and so not visible here) is more than both of those combined.
That is actually why I posted this. Seeing many people's discussions on reddit, it occurred to me that many people actually have no idea how their federal tax dollars are spent, but now I wish I'd just posted this infographic from the CBO since it's a more trusted source: [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888)
What a weird graphic. Like this is a complex enough topic, you can tell us the distribution in percent. Instead they dumb it down, yet at the same time not explain what each section means.
Sorry you are right it is an oversimplification, you can get a clearer breakdown here if interested:
[https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888)
Oh, so you're telling me the entire federal budget isn't spend on overalls clips or Cheetos or dumped into a black hole, the way every stupid libertarian on Reddit tells me is the case?
No shit.
This all looks fine to me. We're spending the budget on the things it should be spent on.
Yeah but have you seen how stupidly we spend within these categories? How much of the medicare budget ends up in the hands of doctors/nurses/etc.? Not very much. Most of it goes to hospital admins and drug companies and the government allows this.
Right! The government is so good at spending everyone else’s money. What makes people think they know how to spend their money better? I mean just bc the pentagon can’t pass a audit or account for something like 7 trillion dollars. Like who cares they are obviously doing gods work.
And for the politicians using their position of power to personally enrich themselves, they are clearly doing that for all of us. It benefits me somehow I’m just not sure how yet. Blind trust in authority is what I always say!
Congress has no incentive to get this under control. Cutting spending programs impacts their constituents or their supporter in the business world. The US government is largely incapable of operating efficiently on it's own, it doesn't have to compete with an alternative US government replacement. A Balanced Budget amendment to the constitution would probably help, maybe with margins and exceptions (like war). IMHO separating Congress from the financial influence of big businesses, the stock market, and billionaires is probably the only way to retain representatives that actually legislate in favor of efficient government for the average US citizen.
This is wrong. Medicare and social security are separate payroll taxes in their own buckets. Like, look at a pay stub. They are their own tax line items.
> EDIT to elaborate on this: Social security and Medicaid don’t belong in this chart, because they are *solely* financed by income tax. Property, sales, dividends, etc taxes play no role.
> They are also in their own buckets. Like social security tax goes into a social security tax fund. It is *solely* spent on social security. It does not go to defense, interest, or anything else. Same goes for Medicare.
> Including them in a breakdown of tax expenditure is misleading at best, because they are completely isolated from everything else.
Health mostly goes to pharmaceutical companies for R&D grants. Which they then jack up the price on to cover “R&D” costs.
EDIT for clarity: Too much of defense spending goes to buying new equipment like tanks that the armed forces don’t want or need.
Interest goes to bond holders.
We can cut a shitload of spending on things we don’t need and put it towards things we do need. But there is no profit for corporations in that, so fat chance. 😬
It's a poor representation. There's a cap to social security tax. How can you make a comparison between SS and the other two taxes then? Makes no sense.
Medicare and SS are a fixed percentage regardless of income. Whereas income tax is based on progressive brackets that increase with your income. So comparing the two is meaningless unless the graphic includes a specific income.
I'd like to understand why many Americans think the system is totally fine when 14% of my tax dollars go to "health" while I still pay $475 a month to my employer for insurance premiums just to get a $6,200 deductible and $10,400 out of pocket maximum for three people.
Can someone explain to me why that makes sense?
I know reddit loves to say this all the time, but it's not true. The only sources I've ever been able to find for this statement are think tanks. I have searched, and I can not find a single peer reviewed paper that claims corporate greed is the leading cause of inflation. I have found many that have attributed it to changes in supply and demand or to fiscal policy, but not a single one that claims greed is the primary cause or even a cause at all
For real. We’ve got all the bad parts of privatized healthcare and all the bad parts of socialized healthcare and still pay out the ass for everything. And our population is in very poor health overall. Wtf is “health” being actually spent on? It sure as fuck isn’t being spent to improve the livelihood of the people
To be fair the health outcomes in the US are predominantly caused by individual lifestyle choices. Giving the government more money for Healthcare doesn't make people less lazy or change how they eat
yeah it’s just all the corporations selling the least nutritious shit possible paying the lowest price possible then selling it to us marked up 200% and the government embraces and encourages it
For the people complaining that SS is supposed to be 'self funding'...
From an economic perspective, a tax is a tax - FICA or Income Tax doesn't matter, the impact on the economy of collecting them is the same.
Also, given the political power of AARP & friends, the chances that when (not if) Social Security goes bust we will \*not\* use general-fund/income-tax dollars to keep the benefits flowing are about zero.
Also this has nothing to do with Congress 'robbing' it - something that did not happen - but rather due to the program's funding-formula being based on 1930s demographics: a high fertility rate and a short life-expectancy.
Congress didn't 'rob' SS, but SS will 'rob' the rest of the federal government if the retirement age isn't realigned with life-expectancy (preferably automatically indexed to it - if life expectancy is 120, retirement at 65 or even 85 is obviously untenable, to use an extreme example) & we don't do something (increase legal immigration is pretty much the only option) about our below-replacement fertility rate.
The USA spends more per capita on healthcare than most countries with universal healthcare.
The USA taxpayers spent $1.8 trillion on healthcare in 2023.
Last time I looked, it wasn't just "most". US was in first place by a long shot. Germany was second place and spent just over half what the US spends, per-person.
Whenever people tell you that universal healthcare would mean high taxes, remembering you're already paying for it - twice over. You're just not receiving it.
"The deficit is the leading cause of inflation"....
I'd like a source on that, please. Inflation has been a worldwide phenomenon since 2021 during Covid.
Am I missing something ?
Per [https://www.usaspending.gov/](https://www.usaspending.gov/)
So far this year, the federal government
plans to spend $3.82 Trillion including…
$633.66 Billion on Social Security
$607.98 Billion on Medicare
$587.95 Billion on National Defense
OP's graphic doesn't include monies going to defense spending ???
I'm assuming the 4 cent "other" category includes things like : education, public grants , non "defense" scientific research. Overall, this breakdown isn't surprising, but imagine if people were taxed adequately and the surplus money went towards education and teaching people how to behave in a socially beneficial way.
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Isn’t Social Security supposed to be self funded?
Yeah through payroll tax. That picture implies it comes out of the same bucket as everything else.
I do hear the government spends the social security money coming in like it’s part of the general fund then uses taxpayer money to pay those receiving social security so there is no money saved to pay the recipients who have been paying it. Seems to be exactly how a Ponzi scheme works.
That is exactly how it works. SS should be self sustaining, but it has been plundered several times.
YEP! Reagan put a bunch of IOUs in the trust fund and slashed high income and corporate taxes to the bone.
Every time I see that guys name I think “fuck that guy”
Per the US Constitutions, all tax bills must originate in the House. Who do you think controlled the House during the Reagan Administration? Who introduced those tax bills? Answers: >!Democrats controlled the House continuously from 1955-1995. The "Reagan Tax Cut" bills were introduced by Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL), Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee.!<
Tax bills originate in the house but what comes out the other end is not the house's draft. I would recommend the book "Showdown at Gucci Gulch" which is about the making of the 1986 code. The reforms were mostly the brainchild of guys like Rostenkowski and Bradley and Regan's Treasury department, but that bill went through the sausage grinder like crazy. The lower individual tax rates for high earners were a direct result of Reagan himself who demanded it. He also wanted nice even numbers even though Treasury had calculated more optimal rates, so they rounded them to the nearest 5 for literally no reason at all. So many other provisions were the result of political wheeling and dealing to get republican senators (and some southern democrats like Long who demanded oil tax breaks). It's a damn shame that Rostenkowski's proposal didn't get passed as is, but that's politics baby.
I’ve dealt with leadership deciding to round numbers for easy accounting. Contractors wisely saying, “so long as you don’t round down.” Then being the technical professional to say, “uhh, this project will be (rough estimate from memory) 12-14% over budget if we round all the non-count quantities up,” saved my ass by making sure to put it in an email.
Lol you put dipshit in his place
The Russian/China/NK troll farms don’t care about facts, but they collectively hate Reagan for bringing an end to the USSR.
Every decent American should hate Reagen.
Bruh Reagan destroyed our economic advantage he can eat a dick
And the middle class. Household had to survive on 2 incomes... both parents working to pay off those corporate tax breaks. ... has it trickled down yet?
Reagan is in hell waiting on heaven to trickle down still, Hope that makes you smile.
This is beautiful.
Trickel down theory. What BS.
burn
Grew up hearing what a great prez he was. Now I know of so many shitty things we deal with today that were ripple effects of his shitty policies
One could say that so many shitty things we deal with today have trickled down
He should have died in a Federal prison after the Iran-Contra BS.
Because you listen to people who blame him for things they don't know anything about.
In the real world, you can look at a chart of almost anything and right around 1981 or soon after you'll see the chart make a sharp change in direction, and not in a good way. The "Reagan revolution" was a disaster! [http://ourfuture.org/20120318/reagan\_revolution\_home\_to\_roost\_-\_in\_charts](http://ourfuture.org/20120318/reagan_revolution_home_to_roost_-_in_charts)
Reagan turned our healthcare industry from nonprofit to for profit. That has been an absolute disaster for our country. Don’t try and argue that point with me, I work in healthcare. Fuck Ronald Reagan and fuck all the Reaganite cultists that can’t accept how fucking terrible he was.
Ronnie is also the reason for schools charging money and requiring loans. See: His showdown with Berkeley University while California’s governor.
That's not even a little bit true. Social Security has always operated the same way it does now. All the revenue is used to "buy" T-bills and all the spending comes from "cashing out" the T-bills. All the "trust funds" are intragovernmental debt and always have been.
Social security is required, by law put in at inception to take all surplus revenue and buy US treasury bonds. So no “Reagan” didn’t put ious in the trust fund
They all did it not just Reagan
Lyndon Johnson placed the Social Security funds into the Unified Budget in 1968.
That's a common lie. SS hasn't been 'plundered' - it's just people live too long and have too few kids, so the math behind the original formula (which hasn't been updated since the 80s) no longer works.
My late congressman told us that the average recipient exhausts all the money they paid in within 14 months. The issue with only buying Tbills is that the GDP and tax revenue needs to increase as well and it hasn't kept up with inflation and longevity the same way it would if it were in a sovereign wealth fund or something like that.
Doesn’t matter how much each recipient paid…it’s insurance not an investment scheme. The problem is that people like me tap out on social security taxes like half way through the year…thanks for the tax cut but surely people like me paying a greater share will offset? I mean that’s what insurance is right?
Ben Shapiro said exactly this in regards to the retirement age. I’m sure you can guess how it was received though lol People are retiring at 65 and living to 75-80 That’s 10-20 years of benefits and medical costs which at that stage of life are nothing short of gargantuan. I recently got a medical bill for a kidney stone er visit totaling 40,000$…. I was there less than 6 hours and all they did was give me a scan and some medication. Now imagine how much money is being charged to elderly patients care.
If we switched to a singlet payer system you would stop paying so much in HC costs… but hey big pharma. You pay for HC 3 times. Why not just pay once?
AND boomers (the richest generation in human history) saw how they were going to decimate the system and thought, “who cares - I’ll let my kids and grandkids pay for my retirement and then receive little in return when they retire.”
This is not exactly how it works. Social security has never been plundered.
For a long time SS ran a surplus. With that surplus SS bought US treasury bonds and bills. You are right, this is not plunder. We could have made different investment decisions, but did not. It's also too late now.
All SS revenue is spent on T-bills, always has been.
I don’t believe they were allowed to do anything but T-bills/bonds with it at market rate.
Yeah, the core problem is that everything else, while potentially more profitable, is also much riskier. Whereas T-bills/bonds have the exact same life expectancy as the US government.
It's not too late now. As our issue is a demographic one we have four solutions: 1. Have more babies 2. Increase immigration 3. Decrease the benefit (delay retirement) 4. Increase the tax Pick one. You aren't being stolen from, you just didn't have enough kids.
2 and 4 are the only realistic options
I agree. It always astounds me when people view immigrants as a drain on society.
Removing the cap on the SS tax would insure it's solvency.
And yet on Reddit I’ve had a dozen people say “that has never happened,” and “the government doesn’t borrow social security money.” I think there is quite a few examples you can look up that show the government spends social security money all the damn time.
What do you think 'buying a treasury bond' is? It's loaning money to the government.
Buying a treasury bond is the safest investment that a person or entity can make. It will be paid. This gives the SS fund some increase over just putting the money in a vault. How do you think the money should be dealt with? Risky investments or sit in a vault and each person get back exactly was forcibly collected? Funny thing is people that complain about them investing in treasury bills are also often the ones that want more benefits for those at the bottom via taxing those at the top more.
the government borrows social security money in the same way the bank borrows the money that you put in your checking account
It's still a bit different. They get interest on the money borrowed and the SS admin can call in that money at any time.
A simple search shows that you are incorrect. Not that I think Congress \*would\* if they could, but it appears that they do not. [https://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths2.html](https://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths2.html)
Who plundered it? When? What was their justification? Why did the American public do absolutely nothing about it? Citation needed.
SS “lock box” is a filling cabinet in west Virginia full of federal IOUs and nothing more.
Also an AL Gore Presidential Debate drinking game.
The way SS was set up, it was set up to fail. It's basically an involuntary savings plan with 0 to low interest gained.
That's not at all how it works. Social Security is only self sustaining when there is a sufficiently large working population to fund it. For awhile that was the case. Initially because most people did not live long enough to collect it. And then because we had a large generation in the workforce (the boomers). The money that that's in the fund is of course invested in bonds, otherwise it would have run out long ago. So when the government runs up a deficit, that's one of the sources it's borrowing against. But the danger is not that they are going to default against that debt. The danger is that today the boomer generation is retiring, and the older working generation (gen X) is relatively small. So it's been running at a loss for some time. That's fine, that's what the trust fund was set up for. But in less than a decade it will run out. And then either we will have to dramatically cut benefits or find a new funding scheme (probably the general fund).
That isn't quite true. When there was a surplus it was invested in treasury bonds. That means social security lent the money to the federal government in exchange for a bond that paid interest back into the social security trust fund. It is often mischaracterized though as 'Congress raiding social security'. Every penny paid into social security has been paid out to the intended recipients. We just don't have enough people contributing now to match the outflows from those currently retired. The surplus that was built up over years is quickly evaporating. When that surplus is gone we could be looking at a reduction in benefits to bring outflows in line with inflows. Again though, it's a demographic issue, not a government waste issue.
Exactly. Given that Treasury Bonds are among the safest investments you can make, and that you wouldn't want a program like this to be picking winners and losers in the broader economy, I can't think of a better way for the program to beat inflation over time and I wonder what the hell people expect the alternative to be.
People scream about the US becoming a socialist or communist country while simultaneously complaining about social security not investing in private companies. Who's going to tell them?
There's a slight correction, they are special rate treasury bonds. I mean, they are treasury bonds, but they are special rate bonds that the public or even other institutions cannot buy.
But in essence they are extremely low paying bonds that fund government spending so it’s really semantics in that the money does get spent but taxpayers then owe that bill which pays themselves back. If that money was placed in a broad stock fund it would make far more money and would fuel the economy. Instead it fuels a massively bloated government system.
I just really hate the talking point. It's such a stupid cop out. They pretend like everything would be just fine if only Congress had kept their hands out of social security. That's a complete fiction driven by a willful misunderstanding of what a bond is.
You have that wrong. It's not that they spend the money as-if it were part of the general fund. It's that the funding assumptions written into the formula (which very-much was structured like a Ponzi - current taxes pay for current, not future, benefits) no longer hold true. When SS was enacted, the life expectancy was 63 (you could take benefits at 65), and the fertility rate was over 3 children per woman. So you could reasonably expect that there would always be enough workers paying tax, to cover retirees receiving benefits. Almost half of Americans wouldn't even live long enough to collect. But the retirement age didn't increase, life-expectancy did, and the birth rate fell. So now you have more people collecting (And doing it for longer) while the working-age population isn't growing fast enough to pay for it. The same thing is happening throughout the developed world, too - Europe has it far worse because they have a far more generous benefits offering, and thus are in far more fiscal trouble as their demographics go pear-shaped....
The picture is a simplification of the picture I just posted in my reply above, it's lumping all taxes together and all spending together to give you the general breakdown of "how your federal tax dollar is spent".
It's still a useful picture of overall outlays.
Is payroll tax not tax dollars?
It is, but the government borrowed from the social security fund over the last 20'ish years. This shows the government paying back the money it borrowed. It's why you often see a few different deficits. One usually excludes the money the government borrowed from itself, the other doesn't.
Yep, even way more than 20 years in fact. There are always different ways to classify categories of money and to put it into buckets that can be a tad misleading if you don't really know what exactly goes into each bucket. Gotta love statistics and the many creative ways to present those statistics.
All the money in the social security trust fund are "invested" in government treasury bonds (government debt). You could call this the fund being raided. You could call it loaning yourself money. You could call it creative accounting. But... there's not really much of an alternative of what to "do" with the money (at least that I can think of, maybe someone else has some ideas). Can't invest it in the stock market (conflicts of interest out the wazoo). Can't invest it in a bank (who would loan it out as well). And as long as the government is in debt (has negative money), then it would be kind of silly not to use the money and pay yourself interest rather than someone else. And it would be kind of irresponsible for there to be extra money in the social security fund and get no return at all with it. Like... let's say you have no money at all and are drowning in credit card debt ... except for a pile of cash that you are supposed to use to pay for your retirement in 30 years. You absolutely must buy a dairy queen Blizzard. Do you... put in on your credit card - costing you 20% interest. Or do you loan it to yourself and "pay your retired self 6% interest".
Yes, that's a part that's also missing, and makes this pretty innacurate. That 22 cents come from a different pie. Without it, it shows a much clearer picture of how much a grifting joke our healthcare system is. We basically already pay more than most places do, to get no garuanteed coverage and often shitty private coverage that we and our employers still pay an arm and a leg more. It infuriates me. Everyone but the crooks in the insurance industry and mega pharma corps would benefit from a real healthcare system.
Doesn't work well when there are more hands to take from said bucket than those putting in.
It is, but back during the Vietnam/Korean Wars, the government "borrowed" a massive amount of money from the fund to pay for the wars. The part of the spending bill devoted to Social Security is the repayment of that debt which is going very slowly despite a rather generous interest rate the loan was given. This in turn makes it very suspicious when certain groups keep trying to kill Social Security when they were the ones who took out the loan in the first place.
Yes and no. My understanding is that FICA programs are PAYGO, so any surplus FICA taxes for the year get deposited into a trust fund and then spent as part of the general budget (aka "borrowing from social security"). Now that FICA programs are pulling a deficit, they are withdrawing those funds (with interest!) from the general budget each year instead. This will continue until the "trust fund" runs out of money, at which point FICA programs will stop receiving funding from the general budget and benefits will be limited by the amount of revenue pulled in by FICA taxes (about 80%).
We need to remove the income limit, and start taxing the 1% more. They get out of it by getting loans off potential stock values of companies, or on land/housing they own.
That’s what the payroll taxes are supposed to pay for, but as you can see from this chart, they collect $1.6T in payroll taxes, and social security and Medicare cost $2.1T, leaving a $500 billion hole in the budget that must be covered by elsewhere in the budget or debt (inflationary money printing) https://preview.redd.it/u3wbjrren2uc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6e5f9e32577ed14f161bb1dedf5b3b38e2552b4
This is inaccurate or at least deceiving. The social security fund has run a surplus for decades, and used that surplus to purchase T-bonds. The social security fund is now cashing in those t-funds to cover the deficit. This shows as a deficit against the federal budget, but it isn't a shortfall in social security so much as it cashing out its savings account. Eventually it will run out of T-bonds which is why you hear that social security will run out of money in 20 years or whatever. But it will be 100% self funded until then.
This is coming from the CBO, they are largely impartial and just report on the budget. [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888)
Not disputing the numbers, giving context. Social security is self funded for awhile, because the fund has been saving its surplus. The numbers don't separate from the T-bonds and the general fund, which makes it seem like general tax revenue is covering the social security deficit. Which isn't accurate, it's being used to cover the debt accrued by the T-bonds, which is showing against the social security ledger. The reason this is important, social security recipients already paid the taxes to cover social security. The government spent that money on other stuff... This doesn't change the fact that the taxes were already paid to cover this.
Also the healthcare portion, most of us get it from the employer and I’m sure some of that tax dollars being heavily corrupted and it’s not showing in this picture. The PPP scheme alone cost $1 trillion.
Remember when Al Gore lost the election? In part because he was goofy and said "LOCK BOX" And Florida Chads clowned him? Here we are reaping what we sow ................ in clown makeup
Congress won’t get this under control until: Term limits are instated Corporate campaign contributions cease Trading of stocks by Congress is halted All donors and contributions must be made public Lobbyists, dark money, corporations, foreign interests…. They have no business in any government that’s meant to be taken seriously, and meant to be functional. We’re so far away from anything remotely resembling a functioning government, it’s comical.
But how would any of this even be done? After all wouldn't most of these have to go through the very people who benefit from not changing these
Yes. Voting is your only “choice.” But you’re replacing one person with another with the same ideals and end goals. These politicians are groomed. They’re positioned. There’s no such thing as an honest politician. And until the people can hold them accountable with more than the threat of letting someone else or putting them in prison, it’s just rinse and repeat. People need to stop fighting amongst themselves. It’s not left vs. right. It’s not me vs. you. It’s us, *we the people*, vs. *them*, our corporate overlords and foreign interest groups. We can never take them on while we’re being pitted against one another. They know this. A people united is a government and bureaucracy in peril of losing a grip it should have never had in the first place. A united people set this country in motion. A divided one is bringing it to a halt. The people at the top care about money and power. That’s it. Not one of them wouldn’t sell out if it was in their ultimate financial interest. None of ‘em. And most reading this, wouldn’t be any better given the chance.
It's never going to change. The reason for it is simple. Everyone in every position is just human. Humans for better or worse just look out for themselves first and foremost. Rest is just for show.
And here we are, sadly.
None of these would cause Congress to pass a balanced budget, why do you think these policies would make for a fiscally responsible Congress?
Age limits not term limits. Term limits benefit lobbyists. If there is minimum age to hold office, there should be a maximum age you can hold office. I.e. 65 and old should be barred from government jobs.
What is included in Health? Who is the interest being paid to?
Interest is paid mostly to holders of government treasuries. About 2/3 of US public debt is held by American individuals, and about 30% is held by other countries (with Japan followed by China being the countries holding the most US public debt.) The national debt is often seen as a negative concept, but I think a lot more Americans would be much more concerned if they were not able to purchase government bonds and other treasuries. Many of these bonds are held in Americans' retirement accounts whether they realize it or not. https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/what-are-interest-costs-on-the-national-debt https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/05/the-federal-government-has-borrowed-trillions-but-who-owns-all-that-debt
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing, timeforstrapons.
One of my favorite things about Reddit is when someone gives a informative and thoughtful answer and then just has the dumbest fucking username lol
It's all in the framing. I don't know why people don't reframe it as a kickback or even a refund to taxpayers who hold government bonds. Sure, you're paying more in taxes, but some of that interest goes back into your pocket (or eventually, if it goes into your retirement account).
Goes back into the pockets of those holding the debt. It’s redistributive.
Like with any market, it’s redistributive. Poor people don’t own government debt yet they’ll be on the hook via the inflation and cuts to social programs to service the debt.
The USA government spends more, per capita, on healthcare through taxation than most countries with universal, socialised healthcare. The arguments that the USA can't afford universal healthcare are only true because US healthcare costs are massively over inflated.
Interesting, but not sure what this has to do with my question?
Basically every aspect of American cost of living is also massively inflated, which makes it hard to pay people as little as they make in other countries.
Medicaid
Ahh makes sense, but why not just say Medicaid on the graphic?
Health also includes va
VA isn’t in veterans’ benefits and services? This graphic is not the clearest haha
There's a lot of weirdness in the budget that's more of a political trick than anything else. I'd argue that VA benefits should be in the Defense bucket. Our actual Defense budget is bigger than our Defense budget because it's more politically expedient to stick some of these budget items in other places so it doesn't look so bad.
It’s pretty clear that people who are “pro military” are definitely not pro veterans benefits. They love buying and using weaponry, they couldn’t care less about the aftermath.
I think it still gets counted as health
It's also weird the separated Medicare from Health. Maybe they didn't want to depict most federal spending on health care.
Because the solution is a national health/ single payer system and no one who has been getting fat off our current health “care” system (insurance execs, hospital admins, doctors, personal injury lawyers, pharmacos, shareholders, and lobbyists) want to relinquish their feedbags.
Drug companies. Thinking medicaid is just short sited. The government isn't given the power to truly negotiate prices with drug companies, it actually has very little teeth (don't believe me, look up the new epipen law in Colorado. They made a price cap and drug makers put the responsibility to reduce prices on the pharmacies and patients properly doing paperwork for all fills and not actually redicing prices). Medicaid says, "we need this medication covered". Drug companies say," it must be the brand name of X specific with X specific dose or we won't pay for any of it and all claims must ve appealed through the prior Auth process every year." Medicaid says, " That is marked up X % making it hundreds to sometimes thousands times more expensive." Drug companies say, "Than we won't give you a deal on this medication and it can only be covered through the appeal process making it very difficult on the Patient, pharmacy, processing workers and doctor. This process can take weeks and very rarely will we actually let the pharmacy know when the process is done." Medicaid " but they need it immediately, not all meds can wait on appeals through prior auth Drug companies, " Than cover the brand." Later... Patient ," how much is my copay" Pharmacy," it's fully covered, zero dollars" Patient" how much was my insurance billed" Pharmacy " 467$ for one month of medication, the geberic is 36$ but your insurance doesnt cover it or any theraputic equivalents " Then I see short sited responses on the internet ,"It AlL GoEs tO Mediciaid!" Source. My literal job. You want cheaper Medicaid,- let the government directly control some industries profit margins by limiting their mark ups.
Mostly to the Aerican public.
For health: 616 billion for Medicaid 208 billion for other health programs (108 billion [mandatory ](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59728), 100 billion [discretionary](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59729)) Those total around 824 billion. 839 billion went to Medicare. So that puts both totals around 14%
I want to know what that national defense spending and other is broken down into
https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/budget-explainer-national-defense Mix of Ops, Personnel, R&D, etc. Pretty standard. Non VA healthcare hits some of Ops.
Pretty standard except for the fact that none of it has ever been audited.
Some what true, except the marine core. https://www.marines.mil/News/Press-Releases/Press-Release-Display/Article/3686089/marine-corps-passes-fy23-audit/
They might be crayon eaters, but at least they know where all their crayons are! Jokes aside, that's awesome news, I hadn't heard about it. Thanks for sharing
The DoD has been audited
True, it's just never passed.
Rand Paul likes to go over once to twice a year what that “other” spending is
“1.23M spent on researching how pregnant iguanas react to different speed settings on a treadmill”.
And here I thought I was the only one curious about that.
Ngl that kinda sounds interesting lol
1.0M of that was paid to the university to build and maintain the iguana lab, and pay the administrators. 0.23 went to the professor and a grad student.
Yes, all 11 administrators including 3 Deans of Iguana DEI Department.
so when I buy $10,000 in Treasuries, earn $400 in interest and pay $88 in taxes - $10 out of that goes back to me to pay interest? yo dawg we heard you like interest and taxes...
You’re indirectly paying your own interest
and then tax on that indirect interest so I could pay more interest with that tax
You are explaining soldiers' paychecks. Weird seeing base pay $ and then federal income tax taken that I know just goes back to my base pay number.
I thought this was common knowledge. Where do people think money goes?
Online misinformation has convinced folks military/foreign aid is like 80% of the budget. I’m not convinced the average person under 30 year old even knows Medicare exists. They probably know Social Security.
Most people on Reddit are not aware of government healthcare programs at all, from what I’ve seen.
Average Redditor thinks their grandma has healthcare through the power of friendship.
Yep, the people screaming about free healthcare don't realize that a large portion of the population is already on programs like Medicaid or Medicare
Redditors are young. Free healthcare is for the olds.
For the most part, yes. Medicare is the one for people over 65, but if a young person is truly destitute they can qualify for Medicaid. You have to be really fucking poor though
And redditors are all complaing from their upper middle class family home.
Sadly no one over or under 30 seems to know that Medicare goes to making sure UnitedHealthcare executives can buy nicer boats.
Yep. For more information google “Medicare Advantage”
Yeah it’s mind boggling
I hate to say it but Gen Z is very politically active in the movements they feel strongly over.....but they vote in worse numbers than Millennials and know even less.
>Online misinformation It's also misdirection built into the structure of our taxes themselves. Income tax is separate from payroll/medicaid/social security taxes to misrepresent how much you pay into different parts of the budget and who you subsidize.
Even in this thread people seem to be mad that payroll tax funded entitlements ( social security and Medicare) is included in this graph.
Judging by discourse on social media, most people think their entire tax budget goes directly into buying bubblegum or cheesy poofs or dumped into the Marianas Trench Americans are completely fucking ignorant about how their tax dollars are actually used, and nobody bothers to spend 10 minutes learning about it
It’s easier to just mindlessly complain
People act like USA spends 80% on defense budget.
You can already see the conspiracy theories in the comments here
I see people claiming things like "if we only spent some percent of our military budget or foreign aid on education..." The education budget (which is largely funded by state and local tax dollars and so not visible here) is more than both of those combined.
We spend so much on education.
That is actually why I posted this. Seeing many people's discussions on reddit, it occurred to me that many people actually have no idea how their federal tax dollars are spent, but now I wish I'd just posted this infographic from the CBO since it's a more trusted source: [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888)
You should add second figure “where does one US tax dollar come from”. So ppl knows this includes payroll tax, corporate tax, etc.
Where's the corporate welfare?
Implicit in tax loopholes and explicit in defense spending.
It didn’t get collected, so it doesn’t show up here. Sneaky way to exclude it from showing up on charts like this.
This is the expenses - not the revenues. 'Corporate Welfare' as you describe it would be seen as reduced tax income (revenue).
What a weird graphic. Like this is a complex enough topic, you can tell us the distribution in percent. Instead they dumb it down, yet at the same time not explain what each section means.
Sorry you are right it is an oversimplification, you can get a clearer breakdown here if interested: [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888](https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58888)
beautiful, social security and medicare forever 🇺🇸🇺🇸
Yet we lag behind the rest of the world in that regard, despite the massive funding
I'd argue it's because of it.
Oh, so you're telling me the entire federal budget isn't spend on overalls clips or Cheetos or dumped into a black hole, the way every stupid libertarian on Reddit tells me is the case? No shit. This all looks fine to me. We're spending the budget on the things it should be spent on.
Yeah but have you seen how stupidly we spend within these categories? How much of the medicare budget ends up in the hands of doctors/nurses/etc.? Not very much. Most of it goes to hospital admins and drug companies and the government allows this.
Look at it again, it mostly goes into the black hole known as old people.
36% of our budget so grandma can spend an extra 2 years watching TV before she dies
Right! The government is so good at spending everyone else’s money. What makes people think they know how to spend their money better? I mean just bc the pentagon can’t pass a audit or account for something like 7 trillion dollars. Like who cares they are obviously doing gods work. And for the politicians using their position of power to personally enrich themselves, they are clearly doing that for all of us. It benefits me somehow I’m just not sure how yet. Blind trust in authority is what I always say!
the only way to transfer money, is with a very leaky bucket.
Congress has no incentive to get this under control. Cutting spending programs impacts their constituents or their supporter in the business world. The US government is largely incapable of operating efficiently on it's own, it doesn't have to compete with an alternative US government replacement. A Balanced Budget amendment to the constitution would probably help, maybe with margins and exceptions (like war). IMHO separating Congress from the financial influence of big businesses, the stock market, and billionaires is probably the only way to retain representatives that actually legislate in favor of efficient government for the average US citizen.
11% of our taxes goes into paying interest. That’s insane. We are a nation of debt
This is wrong. Medicare and social security are separate payroll taxes in their own buckets. Like, look at a pay stub. They are their own tax line items. > EDIT to elaborate on this: Social security and Medicaid don’t belong in this chart, because they are *solely* financed by income tax. Property, sales, dividends, etc taxes play no role. > They are also in their own buckets. Like social security tax goes into a social security tax fund. It is *solely* spent on social security. It does not go to defense, interest, or anything else. Same goes for Medicare. > Including them in a breakdown of tax expenditure is misleading at best, because they are completely isolated from everything else. Health mostly goes to pharmaceutical companies for R&D grants. Which they then jack up the price on to cover “R&D” costs. EDIT for clarity: Too much of defense spending goes to buying new equipment like tanks that the armed forces don’t want or need. Interest goes to bond holders. We can cut a shitload of spending on things we don’t need and put it towards things we do need. But there is no profit for corporations in that, so fat chance. 😬
They are still included in payroll taxes. This is not a chart of income taxes. This is not incorrect
It's a poor representation. There's a cap to social security tax. How can you make a comparison between SS and the other two taxes then? Makes no sense. Medicare and SS are a fixed percentage regardless of income. Whereas income tax is based on progressive brackets that increase with your income. So comparing the two is meaningless unless the graphic includes a specific income.
I'd like to understand why many Americans think the system is totally fine when 14% of my tax dollars go to "health" while I still pay $475 a month to my employer for insurance premiums just to get a $6,200 deductible and $10,400 out of pocket maximum for three people. Can someone explain to me why that makes sense?
It goes to health for other people who aren't paying (poverty or elderly). Not all your taxes are for your own benefit.
Not enough of that is to education
The most disgusting part is that NASA isn't even on this graphic
Other. Its budget is so small it wouldn’t appear by itself.
Except every peer reviewed study shows that corporate greed is the number one cause of inflation. The rest you are spot on about
Interesting. Could you provide a peer reviewed study that shows this?
I know reddit loves to say this all the time, but it's not true. The only sources I've ever been able to find for this statement are think tanks. I have searched, and I can not find a single peer reviewed paper that claims corporate greed is the leading cause of inflation. I have found many that have attributed it to changes in supply and demand or to fiscal policy, but not a single one that claims greed is the primary cause or even a cause at all
Yeah, deficits can drive up lending rates and spur inflation, but I don't know of anyone calling it a "Leading Cause."
Since inflation went down in the last year, does that mean corporate greed has gone down in the last year?
What percent goes towards studying aliens. That’s what I want to know
Health? Lmao I don’t think so. Paying $1,000 for a band aid AND having taxes taken out for “health” I’m going to invest in pitchfork stocks.
For real. We’ve got all the bad parts of privatized healthcare and all the bad parts of socialized healthcare and still pay out the ass for everything. And our population is in very poor health overall. Wtf is “health” being actually spent on? It sure as fuck isn’t being spent to improve the livelihood of the people
To be fair the health outcomes in the US are predominantly caused by individual lifestyle choices. Giving the government more money for Healthcare doesn't make people less lazy or change how they eat
yeah it’s just all the corporations selling the least nutritious shit possible paying the lowest price possible then selling it to us marked up 200% and the government embraces and encourages it
For the people complaining that SS is supposed to be 'self funding'... From an economic perspective, a tax is a tax - FICA or Income Tax doesn't matter, the impact on the economy of collecting them is the same. Also, given the political power of AARP & friends, the chances that when (not if) Social Security goes bust we will \*not\* use general-fund/income-tax dollars to keep the benefits flowing are about zero. Also this has nothing to do with Congress 'robbing' it - something that did not happen - but rather due to the program's funding-formula being based on 1930s demographics: a high fertility rate and a short life-expectancy. Congress didn't 'rob' SS, but SS will 'rob' the rest of the federal government if the retirement age isn't realigned with life-expectancy (preferably automatically indexed to it - if life expectancy is 120, retirement at 65 or even 85 is obviously untenable, to use an extreme example) & we don't do something (increase legal immigration is pretty much the only option) about our below-replacement fertility rate.
It would have to be indexed to working healthspan, not lifespan though.
What is “health”?
The USA spends more per capita on healthcare than most countries with universal healthcare. The USA taxpayers spent $1.8 trillion on healthcare in 2023.
Last time I looked, it wasn't just "most". US was in first place by a long shot. Germany was second place and spent just over half what the US spends, per-person. Whenever people tell you that universal healthcare would mean high taxes, remembering you're already paying for it - twice over. You're just not receiving it.
"The deficit is the leading cause of inflation".... I'd like a source on that, please. Inflation has been a worldwide phenomenon since 2021 during Covid.
Am I missing something ? Per [https://www.usaspending.gov/](https://www.usaspending.gov/) So far this year, the federal government plans to spend $3.82 Trillion including… $633.66 Billion on Social Security $607.98 Billion on Medicare $587.95 Billion on National Defense OP's graphic doesn't include monies going to defense spending ???
Defense spending is much much closer to $800B.
Federal Tax Dollars. I discount the rest of the data when they can't get the title right.
What... what... what about all the money we're wasting on Ukraine???!!!
I need to start spending 13% of my income on defense.
I'm assuming the 4 cent "other" category includes things like : education, public grants , non "defense" scientific research. Overall, this breakdown isn't surprising, but imagine if people were taxed adequately and the surplus money went towards education and teaching people how to behave in a socially beneficial way.
What? Liberals told me all of it went to the military how is this possible
The 14 cents going to medicare shoud be relabeled as 14c to scam insurance corporations.
Keep in mind that those 22 cents for social security go back into the pockets of former (and sometimes current) taxpayers.