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There's this perception that the majority of US government spending is on the military which is completely untrue.

Defence is only 12% of the US federal budget - what are you going to cut it to? It's not going to solve the issue even if it's abolished. Over the last 10 years health, Medicare and Social Security have grown 103%, 83% and 78% respectively for an increase of $1.64 trillion to $3.55t vs a $916b on defence. With an aging population it's only going to cost more and more over time, you can't continue to put higher taxes on a shrinking share of productive population to care for more and more unproductive retirees under any economic system.

Defense might not be a cure all for the deficit, but reducing expenses to the tune of 12% sure is a heck of a start. Clearly defense spending isn't buying us that much if the our armed forces can't deal with a middle income country (Hormuz blockage) and a group of rebels (Bab al Mandeb blockage).

Cutting defense doesn't even need to be complicated. Just stop forever wars in the middle east. It won't hurt our actual defense capabilities and will raise America's stature in the world. Heck, we have the best defense imaginable given to us for free (the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans), to the extent that two world wars combined didn't see a major attack on the US mainland.

Cutting (or better still privatizing) social security, medicare and medicaid, while being the Republican wet dream, actually translates to direct harm to millions of citizens.

Of course those programs grow when people get old, that’s when they grow! I suppose the federal government should’ve invested in investments to increase productivity to support a rapidly aging population instead of using cheap debt for inefficient, unnecessary non mandatory spending (tax cuts and military spending).

> you can't continue to put higher taxes on a shrinking share of productive population to care for more and more unproductive retirees under any economic system.

Start at the top with very high marginal tax rates for the wealthiest, work your way down. The wealth exists, tax it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_Americans_b...

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

(The top 10% of U.S. households own roughly 67% to 68% of the total household wealth in the United States, the vast majority of which are securities)

Raising the income tax rates aren’t going to help though. The ultra wealthy you want to tax have (basically) no income to tax. Are you proposing to institute a wealth tax?

If necessary, yes. Whatever form is necessary to effectuate the target outcome. We tax real estate, real estate is just another form of asset and wealth (with a similar liquidity profile to private equity). We can do the same with securities, equity (public or private), etc.

We don’t really tax real estate. That’s why all the old farts pay $1000/year in property taxes on a home that’s worth millions. Do you propose taxing them on the actual value of their homes?

> We don’t really tax real estate.

This is not a serious argument based on total property tax collected across all 50 states on an annual basis (~$2T) [1]. Federal government spends ~$7T/year against $2.4T in personal income tax, $1.7T in payroll tax, and $530B in corporate income tax (~$4.9T in revenue) [2].

Could we tax real estate more? I’m sure, not opposed based on fair valuations and implementation details. We should start with securities first imho, as we already tax real estate today. Conveniently, the top 10% of households own 93% of US equities. US GDP is ~$32T annually.

[1] https://www.nahb.org/blog/2025/03/state-local-property-tax-c...

[2] https://usafacts.org/government-spending/

What? Your numbers are way off. You didn’t read your source, the $2T is total local/state tax revenue, not property taxes.

Also, no we shouldn’t tax securities in a wealth tax scheme. We already tax them when you actually realize a profit or loss. Should we tax the value of your 401k?

One thing that would capture tax revenue from the wealthy and eliminate a rather large tax loophole would be to automatically realize gains on stocks used as collateral for loans.

edit: formatting

> Are you proposing to institute a wealth tax?

Ideally, but failing that raise the estate tax to 90% for estates over the current exemption limit of $15 million and eliminate all trust loopholes.

The billionaires would be able to enjoy their money in their lifetimes and still ensure that their children are taken care of in their lifetimes all while paying their fair share to society upon death.

Single payer Healthcare would flatten that curve by removing the incentive that insurance companies and health providers have to raise prices in coordination. Insurance is only allowed a certain percentage of admin costs (salaries etc) and profit from premiums so their incentive is to raise premiums but they can only do that by showing increased costs. Health providers have an incentive to show their costs aren't fully paid by insurance so they can also justify inflation of expenses.

> Single payer Healthcare

Have you studied them in other countries? I suggest you inspect your assumptions by looking at what already happens.

Voters want infinite "free" healthcare from their politicians, so healthcare costs continuously increase. You have little recourse to say no to taxes.

In New Zealand ~17% of government expenditure was on health in 2000 and in 2026 it was ~22%.

In NZD it went from ~$10B to ~$40B (inflation and demographics are also an influence).

Privately paid also exists, but only ~1/3 the spending of public health. NZ government ACC spending is also huge.

Government ownership does not fix the problems you wishfully hope it might.

I did. I wrote several papers on it. The OECD spends far less for better outcomes than the US with lower slope of growth. And the growth is in large part due to demographic changes as populations age. Changes in demographics shouldn't be used to say health care doesn't answer cant work. Its ratios of spending across a population as some pay in when they are healthy and some consume as they age. Change the ratio and cost as a ratio also changes.

Universal SPH would save a net $300B to $1T, reduce paperwork, reduce deaths/improve outcomes, and provide better care. The FUD canards of "rationing", "waiting lists", and "communism" as well as classism and corrupt profiteering are the barriers to less suffering. Just give everyone the same coverage that doesn't have a 20% hole or lifetime limits... and that eliminates Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, CHIP, ACA, and most private insurance, and most billing coding and prior-auth nonsense. Not doing so wastes money and kills people, just like parts of the BBB coming into effect after the midterms is going to bankrupt and kill thousands of people.

I agree. I own home health care agencies in 14 states. The admin we have to fund is absolutely ridiculous and wasteful. But republicans use clerical errors to scream about waste fraud and abuse because that justifies cutting spending and so the system operates inefficiently and costs keep rising on the public and private side.

Nothing will change in a lasting manner without first leadership addressing political and campaign corruption. Then and only then can SPH and nationalization/re-regulation/nonprofitization happen. For-profit healthcare should be allowed on the periphery but only under a carefully proscribed and uniformly-regulated manner rather than the predatory manner (i.e., private equity) allowed now. Nearly all healthcare should be nonprofit, government, and/or small businesses vaguely similar to the UK NHS or how it worked 50 years ago.

"Defence is only 12%…"

Only? My understanding is that this is double, triple many European countries.

Medicare, Social Security: not discretionary spending. Also self-funded programs (well, Part A of Medicare).

> Only? My understanding is that this is double, triple many European countries.

Considering what is going on in Europe right now, maybe this is not a good point to try to make.

I have seen no evidence that Congress cares about what the bond market thinks. In what scenario do you think the bond market can compel Congress?

https://x.com/Aviation_Intel/status/2105415209284464925

> Bond market is in revolt about the national debt and I hear crickets from Washington. You think this would be a crisis. Amazing really.

Some combination of the bond market rejecting Treasuries for other similar investments while also pushing up other debt costs causing excessive failures in interest rate sensitive parts of the economy. Hard to predict when, but it’ll look strikingly familiar to the 2008 GFC I think, the day Bear Stearns collapsed. An event will occur, and there will be a cascading loss of confidence in the bond market. Not a great time when diesel fuel is also at record high prices and will be for at least the next year.

Global bond sell-off deepens as Asian yields jump - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49917899 - September 2026

How a Global Debt Crisis Starts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49927749 - October 2026

That may be true, but why is Congress the metric? Congress is broken. In how many of the last 20 years have they actually passed a budget? It might be two; I'm pretty sure it's not more than five. That's their most basic job, and they can't or won't do it.

Whether Congress cares does not tell you whether there's a problem. The fact that Congress doesn't care is part of the problem - maybe the biggest part.

> and they can't or won't do it

Instead of blaming Congress, perhaps blame democracy.

Voters loath austerity, and they support spending.

Watch the experiment happening live in New Zealand elections. Our incumbant conservative party (National) is aiming for a budget at about 30% of GDP. Our progressive party (Labour) wants to increase taxes and increase spending to maybe 33% of GDP.

You can see if voters care about keeping spending in check, because it seems likely to be a central issue of campaigns. Although we have MMP voting so it isn't totally clear. Also note that I think most of our politicians would be seen as left-wing if looked at by anyone on the right.

It’s essentially impossible to balance the budget without cutting entitlements as the comment you are replying to suggests.

They are called “entitlements” because we have a reasonable expectation of getting what we were promised when we agreed to pay taxes as our part of the social contract.

If you say, “We should have invested more,” I point you to the 40% of current retirees that were not in a position to invest because their jobs didn't pay them enough above the cost of existing. And then there are any number of events, such as age discrimination, common medical issues, divorce, and bankruptcy, that destroy retirement plans.

From what I can tell, it's not possible for the vast majority of the population to be able to save for a 20 plus year retirement.

One of the things that keep people from saving are the activities driven by their investing in the stock market. To increase returns, "Activist investors" and private equity drive companies to shed jobs. You shed a job, you destroy a person's ability to save for retirement, which makes them more dependent on the social contract of Social Security and Medicare.

Cutting benefits will only cause suffering. The cost will fall on society in other ways in terms of elderly homeless people filling the ERs, begging in the streets, or committing suicide. Is it time for a "Modest Proposal II"?

Yes, I specifically said raise taxes because many here believe spending cuts alone will solve this. It is impossible to not raise taxes based on debt load and forward mandatory spending curves. The bond market will force this to occur, like your credit card company raising your interest rate and bringing your credit limit down to your current balance.

Taxes will go up, voluntarily or involuntarily. If we didn’t want to get here, well, should’ve never spent so frivolously on tax cuts for the wealthy and a bloated military that is unable to pass an audit. But we did, and that debt is going to have to be paid back, with interest. It’s impossible to grow out of this debt, and there are more workers than very wealthy people and their politicians.

Totally false. It was balanced in the 90s. Its just that raising taxes has to be part of the equation. Guess what, three successive republican administrations have lowered taxes. So maybe just roll those back.

But that's not comparable. If the tax take/GDP was the same today as it was when the budget was balanced then (19.9%), there would still be a deficit well over a trillion dollars. The US is simply spending a lot more. In terms of entitlements, certain things have changed structurally.

For example in the year 2000, people aged over 65 were 12.4% of the U.S. population. Today, that demographic has grown dramatically to 19% of the population. That's fewer people working and paying taxes while also simultaneously drawing more from medicare and social security.

This doesn't mean it's "impossible". But to balance the budget today without major spending cuts would require raising taxes 39%. It's just so different than it was then to make the math work out.

One thing to do would be get rid of the $184k cutoff on payroll tax. That would greatly extend the life of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

That gives a lot more time to phase in any longer term changes to those programs.

But that is because of wars and stimulus because of failed policies like bush’s push for home ownership and mortgage deregulation and Clinton’s move to deregulate banks. The policy could and should be that if emergency events happen emergency taxes are levied over time when the economy allows.

Also not all deficits are bad. It is reasonable to borrow to invest in basic infrastructure. The return on investment from nasa and the university system and darpa to the US economy dwarf the cost of borrowing.

If the remaining deficit is around a trillion dollars, and we spend more than that on needless wars in the middle east, it's easy to see what to cut to balance the budget....

So raise taxes more.

The balance in the 90s was double counting social security surplus while also spending it as intra government debt.

Exactly this. Thank you for the thoughtful fact based analysis

the right wing is not going to like where this all leads (and neither are the centrists or any of the rest of us, tbh)