Not necessarily. Life is not a zero sum game.
Who is hurt by better funding for schools in poor neighbourhoods? Who is hurt by training cops to not shoot first and ask questions later? Who is hurt by encouraging home ownership by black people?
Whatever that money would otherwise have been spent on is harming the recipient of that now foregone benefit. If you raise taxes to do it, taxpayers are harmed.
> Who is hurt by encouraging home ownership by black people?
If home ownership is a good thing, whoever would have otherwise bought those marginal houses is harmed.
An economy would become zero-sum if we ran up against the limits of the universe. Until then, rest assured that opportunity can grow for both sides in a transaction.
This would only make sense if the amount of welfare for rich people weren't outrageously high in the form of regressive income taxation, non meaningful wealth taxation, corporate tax breaks and subsidies, loan forgiveness programs for business owners etc etc all that on top of a nearly trillion dollar budget for military kit that sees what 40% usage?
Great and all but we really can’t afford any of this.
There’s no practical sense in which we’re paying it off nor even paying it down.
In 2012, the US was fighting two wars, so the fact that DoD spending didn't go down by 2022 is indicative of the problem.
It's also misleading to use the few years when there was substantial pandemic related spending as indicative of the US's normal spending habits.
Your information is out of date. Costs have exceeded tax income since 2010 and have exceeded total income (tax plus interest) since 2021.
The OASI trust fund that pays social security retirement benefits is projected to have a $53B (3.8%) actuarial shortfall this year, up from $40B last year. The trustees project this shortfall will increase every year thereafter until the fund is completely depleted ten years from now (assuming no change in law)
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/tr23summary.pdf
To become solvent over 75 years the SS tax rate would need to be increased by 27.7%, from 12.4% today to 15.84%. Eliminating the payroll cap (currently $160K) would buy 25 years, but only if the corresponding benefit cap was not also raised.
Social Security (OASDI) is not very sensitive to inflation since the salary cap on contributions is indexed to average wages and adjusts yearly. The benefits paid out are also adjusted by periodic cost of living adjustments. So when inflation goes up both contributions and withdrawals rise by roughly equal amounts.
The military spending that really added to the debt were primarily the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is not true. If I, a taxpayer, want my taxes raised for the sake of extending equality to a historically and currently oppressed group, then I am not harmed.
If you, a taxpayer, disagree with the notion of restorative justice, I posit that your overall happiness would be helped more by empathy and less by "lower taxes".
If you want your money used to pay for reparations you can donate to a charity with aims aligned with that desire. No one is arguing about what you do with your money.
> If you, a taxpayer, disagree with the notion of restorative justice, I posit that your overall happiness would be helped more by empathy and less by "lower taxes".
A functioning society requires accepting other people have different priorities and values from yours.
I can also advocate for the state to do it on my behalf. I prefer that solution, because a larger amount of resources can be allocated.
> A functioning society requires accepting other people have different priorities and values from yours.
I accept this, but the values expressed disturb me.
The only reason a larger amount of resources can be allocated is because you are advocating for using state violence to force people who don’t agree with you to also pay for your ideas. That’s what taxes are, fundamentally.
a functioning democracy requires accepting that, in the event that your values conflict with those of the majority, your values lose and theirs win
we saw on January 6th in the US what happens when a loud minority can't accept that
unfortunately, some are under the misunderstanding that democracy means all ideas are equal and have equal value, or indeed universally have positive value
it does not, and they do not
If the majority says, for example, some race is inferior, that's not sufficient to anchor the law and we have a 14th Amendment to protect against such abuse.
if the minority says, for example, some race is inferior, that's even less sufficient to anchor the law, and insufficient to overrule the majority saying it isn't
Dissent from your politics does not require a lack of empathy, and having your politics doesn't automatically mean having it.
When more people are capable of buying houses, more houses are built to meet the demand.
Life is a zero-sum game in way more ways than it is not, especially on the scale of a typical human life-span or important decisions that people make.
This is a bad trope that just won't die.
In fact you can see a lot of negative outcomes in spheres like housing and medicine precisely because of zero-sum issues.