US Debt Visualized

[UNI88]

No I’m not against healthcare

For starters, I’m against excessive testing, scare tactics and playing on your emotions that are designed to get you into their testing “universe” they will do this especially if they like your insurance

Body scans, MRIs, CT scans that are really not necessary and very expensive

CT scans are really not good for you anyway. And these scans always find something that wasn’t really what they were looking for in the first place to keep you going back to the doctor. You’re stuck emotionally because nobody wants to die and the medical field uses this against you. One of the best things I heard a doctor say was “you’re not gonna die from this, you’ll die with this” … he wasn’t talking to me, but the person he was talking to benefitted emotionally from that statement

And one of the reasons there is so much testing now is because everyone has insurance… and nobody negotiates on the price of medical procedures because they think their insurance will cover it ….so why negotiate …. these insurance companies can charge whatever they want

Oh man is there a crap ton of ignorance in this post.

What tests are necessary in your book? Have you ever been referred for an MRI? Are you aware of the hoops you often have to go through to get one? I am.

What about testing costs before deductibles are met? I had a good friend who I helped get into recovery in January. The cost for a 28 day program was $36,000. He had a $6,000 deductible through his employer based plan.

Have a seat son. You’re way over your skis on this one.

CH isn't completely wrong. There are probably some risk averse doctors who order unnecessary tests. Are the doctors the only ones to blame? Or should we also place some blame on plaintiffs bar attorneys and litigious twats like donald trump who sue people at the drop of a hat?

I know, I know - tDS, tDS, tDS, blah, blah, blah.

[Caribbean Hen]

No I’m not against healthcare

For starters, I’m against excessive testing, scare tactics and playing on your emotions that are designed to get you into their testing “universe” they will do this especially if they like your insurance

Body scans, MRIs, CT scans that are really not necessary and very expensive

CT scans are really not good for you anyway. And these scans always find something that wasn’t really what they were looking for in the first place to keep you going back to the doctor. You’re stuck emotionally because nobody wants to die and the medical field uses this against you. One of the best things I heard a doctor say was “you’re not gonna die from this, you’ll die with this” … he wasn’t talking to me, but the person he was talking to benefitted emotionally from that statement

And one of the reasons there is so much testing now is because everyone has insurance… and nobody negotiates on the price of medical procedures because they think their insurance will cover it ….so why negotiate …. these insurance companies can charge whatever they want

Oh man is there a crap ton of ignorance in this post.

What tests are necessary in your book? Have you ever been referred for an MRI? Are you aware of the hoops you often have to go through to get one? I am.

What about testing costs before deductibles are met? I had a good friend who I helped get into recovery in January. The cost for a 28 day program was $36,000. He had a $6,000 deductible through his employer based plan.

Have a seat son. You’re way over your skis on this one.

It’s a tough one and it’s exactly what the insurance industry prays on, the doctors will CT scan you to death if you allow them to

Note that I’m not talking about your situation but in generalities

[BDKJMU]

So why is it called Obamacare?

He got all the credit for it so he should also get all the blame

The blame is he didn’t go far enough, failing to establish a public option………like EVERY OTHER advanced economy that spends way less on healthcare with equal to if not better outcomes.

And every other advanced economy doesn’t have 1/2 their population being lard buckets. Because of that we will spend more with worse outcomes no matter what we do until we fix the diet/processed foods/lack of exercise/sitting on ass epidemic.

[BDKJMU]

All of the problems is, it’s not really healthcare at all. It’s health scare.

Approximately 16% of the population was uninsured prior to the ACA. That's dropped to approximately 8% today. If you were one of the approximately 8% who now has insurance it was not a "scare". That's roughly 23 million people.

How many of that 16% were illegal aliens?
How many of that 16% were legal immigrants? (To be a green card holder you aren’t suppose to be a public charge).

The % of US Citizens who were uninsured prior to ACA wasn’t that high.

[BDKJMU]

Oh man is there a crap ton of ignorance in this post.

What tests are necessary in your book? Have you ever been referred for an MRI? Are you aware of the hoops you often have to go through to get one? I am.

What about testing costs before deductibles are met? I had a good friend who I helped get into recovery in January. The cost for a 28 day program was $36,000. He had a $6,000 deductible through his employer based plan.

Have a seat son. You’re way over your skis on this one.

CH isn't completely wrong. There are probably some risk averse doctors who order unnecessary tests. Are the doctors the only ones to blame? Or should we also place some blame on plaintiffs bar attorneys and litigious twats like donald trump who sue people at the drop of a hat?

I know, I know - tDS, tDS, tDS, blah, blah, blah.

No that is a reasonable take.

[Caribbean Hen]

CH isn't completely wrong. There are probably some risk averse doctors who order unnecessary tests. Are the doctors the only ones to blame? Or should we also place some blame on plaintiffs bar attorneys and litigious twats like donald trump who sue people at the drop of a hat?

I know, I know - tDS, tDS, tDS, blah, blah, blah.

No that is a reasonable take.

Yep, the lawyers and the lawsuits are the real reasons the doctors order all the tests, they really don’t have any choice. If you opt out of the test, most of them are perfectly fine with it as well.

[Caribbean Hen]

Oh man is there a crap ton of ignorance in this post.

What tests are necessary in your book? Have you ever been referred for an MRI? Are you aware of the hoops you often have to go through to get one? I am.

What about testing costs before deductibles are met? I had a good friend who I helped get into recovery in January. The cost for a 28 day program was $36,000. He had a $6,000 deductible through his employer based plan.

Have a seat son. You’re way over your skis on this one.

CH isn't completely wrong. There are probably some risk averse doctors who order unnecessary tests. Are the doctors the only ones to blame? Or should we also place some blame on plaintiffs bar attorneys and litigious twats like donald trump who sue people at the drop of a hat?

I know, I know - tDS, tDS, tDS, blah, blah, blah.

Just based on my own experience when they tried to rush somebody in for a cardiac catheterization something just didn’t feel right…. The more questions you ask the more you learn and what I learned is a lot of doctors are full of shit.

If you have good insurance, be extra careful

By Dr. Evan, Levine, MD

Are some American hospitals risking the health and even the lives of their patients in order to garner greater profits? A recent review published in January, 2014, in a journal from the American Heart Association, of a database of diagnostic coronary angiography in New York State, strongly suggests they are.

It found that only 35% of all the coronary angiograms between 2010 and 2011, were definitely appropriate studies, while 25% were considered absolutely without merit. These mindboggling numbers should sound an alarm to anyone who has been scheduled for an angiogram, in any part of our country, and speaks volumes to issues I have been warning the public about since the publication of my book, What Your Doctor Won’t (or Can’t) Tell You, almost ten years ago.

[Caribbean Hen]

https://www.namd.org/journal-of-medicin ... dures.html

Tip of the iceberg especially in a totally corrupt state like NY

[Caribbean Hen]

“Once patients arrived at the Brooklyn Clinic, often without understanding why they had been referred to the practice, they underwent a series of diagnostic tests and follow-up office visits. These tests and office visits generally were not based on the patients’ actual treatment needs. Rather, MITTAL and others acting at his direction ordered these tests and office visits to create documentation sufficient to justify subjecting patients to unnecessary peripheral vascular interventional procedures—surgical procedures focused on clearing purported blockages in the blood vessels in patients’ legs. MITTAL directed others to, among other things, fabricate the descriptions of patients’ symptoms recorded in the practice’s office visit notes, varying the symptoms across patients so that it was not apparent that the symptoms were fake”

[Caribbean Hen]

It’s pennies on a hundred dollar bill but I’ll take it

“I have been working for years, literally years, to target welfare fraud — especially the fraudsters who conduct fraud in the name of deceased Americans,” Kennedy said. “In 2023 alone, for example, the federal government sent $1.3 billion — not million, billion. The federal government sent $1.3 billion to dead people.”

Senator Kennedy of Louisiana

Nobody better than this guy!

[Caribbean Hen]

For fiscal year 2025, the U.S. federal government collected approximately $5.2 trillion in revenue and spent $7.0 trillion, resulting in a deficit of $1.8 trillion.


1 trillion was spent was paying back interest on money the government had to borrow just to keep the government running

We need a Greta Thornburg type (hopefully a hottie) for the national debt as it is much more important than climate change

[UNI88]

[GannonFan]

That first chart is a good read, but the important parts are the year-on-year growth - that's where you can see the actual addition to the debt. For instance, you can see the last year of the Clinton Presidency where we actually had no growth of the debt with a balanced budget (result of Cold War peace dividend, bubble in stock market, pushback from Gingrich in Congress, and turning over economic decisions to Rubin). George W started having consistent, modest increases through his Presidency, and then finally one of the first big bumps at the end of his term as the housing bubble of 2008 came home to roost (not all his fault, mind you, but he deservedly gets a good share of the blame too). You really see the Obama years were almost consistently considerably large unbalanced budgets - didn't realize how much those were at the time. Trump's first term doesn't look rosy either, and then gets blown up even more by the COVID spending. What's really noticeable is how bad the Biden years were - even if you allow the first year to be COVID impacted, there's really no excuse for the rest of his term and the massive additions to the debt (modern monetary theory run amok). Surprisingly, the first year of the next Trump terms actually is a big reduction in the increase in the debt. We'll see if it continues in that direction for the rest of his term.

[Caribbean Hen]

TDS 88 forgot to mention that the Democrats shut down the Federal government because they wanted to spend even more…

This is what our government is doing to stay afloat

Obviously, we don’t have enough money to fund all of our obligations and other expenditures

The federal government asks foreign countries and investors for a loan and issues Treasuries that they have to pay back with interest

That interest on the money the government borrows is about 1 trillion a year or about 20% of the government‘s revenue

They have an auction for T bills and if they can’t sell all of them… no worries because the Fed steps in and buys the remaining Treasuries

The Fed pays for them by creating dollars just by a few computer clicks…. That’s right that government just creates money out of thin air.

If you think the answer is raising taxes, like the Democrats do …. think again. Just look at that broad network of scams that are going on in multiple states right now. This broad spectrum idea of scamming money is stealing from your tax dollars.

And to think this country was more alarmed about climate change. A narrative that they learned in school, the schools that don’t even teach the poor kids how to balance a checkbook do their tax return, or investing or how money even works. I know, we need to keep them stupid because the economy needs them to be

[BDKJMU]

Garbage #s from the usually wrong CBO. The CBO scores the BBB based on:
-A paltry 1.8% annual GDP growth rate over 10 years.
-Assumes static scoring with the 2017 tax cuts permanent. In other words, if tax rates are cut 10%, then automatically assumes the govt gets 10% less revenue, and vice versa. Which is of course garbage, because it doesn‘t take into account how increasing or decreasing rates effects the economy.
-Doesn‘t take into account tarriff revenue being brought in, which is currently massive.

BBB was signed into law end of 2nd qtr 2025. quarter 2025.
3rd qtr GDP growth: 4.4%, blowing away expectations.
4th qtr 2025 GDP growth rate estimate by Atlanta Fed 5.4%, which blows away expectations.
https://www.financialcontent.com/articl ... e_vignette
Just wait until the full effects of the BBB kick in by 2027-2028…

[Caribbean Hen]

That first chart is a good read, but the important parts are the year-on-year growth - that's where you can see the actual addition to the debt. For instance, you can see the last year of the Clinton Presidency where we actually had no growth of the debt with a balanced budget (result of Cold War peace dividend, bubble in stock market, pushback from Gingrich in Congress, and turning over economic decisions to Rubin). George W started having consistent, modest increases through his Presidency, and then finally one of the first big bumps at the end of his term as the housing bubble of 2008 came home to roost (not all his fault, mind you, but he deservedly gets a good share of the blame too). You really see the Obama years were almost consistently considerably large unbalanced budgets - didn't realize how much those were at the time. Trump's first term doesn't look rosy either, and then gets blown up even more by the COVID spending. What's really noticeable is how bad the Biden years were - even if you allow the first year to be COVID impacted, there's really no excuse for the rest of his term and the massive additions to the debt (modern monetary theory run amok). Surprisingly, the first year of the next Trump terms actually is a big reduction in the increase in the debt. We'll see if it continues in that direction for the rest of his term.

I mentioned it every day when Joey and the Radicals were burning up the printer… it’s wonderfully ironic that Clambellita herself was the one that won Trump the election because she’s the idiot that signed the big Covid spending spree as the vice president. She had the tie breaking vote. She sealed her own fate and JoBozo had no clue his inflation exploded up to 9.2%. Klambela casting that vote applauded it and celebrated it too like she was doing something great. she actually for those not fond of Dems

Will be interesting to see what the new fed chief is gonna do and we all know he’s gonna lower rates aggressively to start out. I think the theory is just because lowering rates is inflationary, It might not actually be that bad if growth outpaces inflation, stocks continue to go up and mortgage rates go down. We will see because if inflation wins The Radicals will be back

[kalm]

Absent from this discussion is corporate and taxes on the wealthy.

Lowering those to practically nothing benefits the investor class, super rich, and corporations who need a working class to be able to afford their products.

[GannonFan]

Absent from this discussion is corporate and taxes on the wealthy.

Lowering those to practically nothing benefits the investor class, super rich, and corporations who need a working class to be able to afford their products.

Corporate taxes are already a lost cause. It's bad enough that those taxes are just double taxation anyway as you're going to be collecting taxes on the salaries of the people who actually make up the corporation, i.e. the workers. But the world is a pretty small place in the grand scheme of things, and trying to hike taxes on corporations simply builds the business case to move the corporation out of that high tax country. A simple application of game theory tells you the final outcome is very low corporate taxation. Now, taxes on the wealthy could be something, but it can't be some money-grab "wealth tax". Simply making the change to taxing stock options as income (and not taxing at the lower investing rate) would go a long way to closing off a real loophole. If a high ranking manager gets paid in stock options, count those options at the point of receipt as income and tax as income. I'm in favor of that kind of reform.

[UNI88]

Absent from this discussion is corporate and taxes on the wealthy.

Lowering those to practically nothing benefits the investor class, super rich, and corporations who need a working class to be able to afford their products.

Corporate taxes are already a lost cause. It's bad enough that those taxes are just double taxation anyway as you're going to be collecting taxes on the salaries of the people who actually make up the corporation, i.e. the workers. But the world is a pretty small place in the grand scheme of things, and trying to hike taxes on corporations simply builds the business case to move the corporation out of that high tax country. A simple application of game theory tells you the final outcome is very low corporate taxation. Now, taxes on the wealthy could be something, but it can't be some money-grab "wealth tax". Simply making the change to taxing stock options as income (and not taxing at the lower investing rate) would go a long way to closing off a real loophole. If a high ranking manager gets paid in stock options, count those options at the point of receipt as income and tax as income. I'm in favor of that kind of reform.

Lower corporate taxes have very likely benefited a lot or people saving for retirement. Defined benefit pension plans are going away for valid reasonr. I would much rather rely on the market to help build and maintain my retirement nest egg then be dependent on government programs. We should be encouraging and teaching people how to be at least basic investors not demonizing the market.

[kalm]

Corporate taxes are already a lost cause. It's bad enough that those taxes are just double taxation anyway as you're going to be collecting taxes on the salaries of the people who actually make up the corporation, i.e. the workers. But the world is a pretty small place in the grand scheme of things, and trying to hike taxes on corporations simply builds the business case to move the corporation out of that high tax country. A simple application of game theory tells you the final outcome is very low corporate taxation. Now, taxes on the wealthy could be something, but it can't be some money-grab "wealth tax". Simply making the change to taxing stock options as income (and not taxing at the lower investing rate) would go a long way to closing off a real loophole. If a high ranking manager gets paid in stock options, count those options at the point of receipt as income and tax as income. I'm in favor of that kind of reform.

Lower corporate taxes have very likely benefited a lot or people saving for retirement. Defined benefit pension plans are going away for valid reasonr. I would much rather rely on the market to help build and maintain my retirement nest egg then be dependent on government programs. We should be encouraging and teaching people how to be at least basic investors not demonizing the market.

My point, which I’ve made before, is corporate taxes once represented nearly 40% of revenues. Not to mention, the original idea of incorporation was to serve the public good. This typically involved public works projects and services like the Erie Canal. Perpetual private gain and generational wealth was not the intent.

But where are we going to make up that revenue today?

I agree in the personal responsibility of saving and investing for retirement. It just doesn’t seem realistic. Especially given our collective lack of financial literacy.

[UNI88]

Lower corporate taxes have very likely benefited a lot or people saving for retirement. Defined benefit pension plans are going away for valid reasonr. I would much rather rely on the market to help build and maintain my retirement nest egg then be dependent on government programs. We should be encouraging and teaching people how to be at least basic investors not demonizing the market.

My point, which I’ve made before, is corporate taxes once represented nearly 40% of revenues. Not to mention, the original idea of incorporation was to serve the public good. This typically involved public works projects and services like the Erie Canal. Perpetual private gain and generational wealth was not the intent.

But where are we going to make up that revenue today?

I agree in the personal responsibility of saving and investing for retirement. It just doesn’t seem realistic. Especially given our collective lack of financial literacy.

That is independent of Ganny's point - despite trump's America Only agenda (let's shed the erroneous America First label), we still live in an interconnected world where corporations can move their opertions elsewhere. We need corporate tax rates that encourage them to stay in the US and to keep jobs (and their tax revenue) in the US.

Should we look at how we tax, companies that are largely automated but still impact our transportation and other infrastructure? Yes.

Using lack of financial literacy as a reason for the government to get more involved in retirement planning rather than an opportunity to teach people financial literacy will make the country dumber and ultimately less successful IMO.

[GannonFan]

Lower corporate taxes have very likely benefited a lot or people saving for retirement. Defined benefit pension plans are going away for valid reasonr. I would much rather rely on the market to help build and maintain my retirement nest egg then be dependent on government programs. We should be encouraging and teaching people how to be at least basic investors not demonizing the market.

My point, which I’ve made before, is corporate taxes once represented nearly 40% of revenues. Not to mention, the original idea of incorporation was to serve the public good. This typically involved public works projects and services like the Erie Canal. Perpetual private gain and generational wealth was not the intent.

But where are we going to make up that revenue today?

I agree in the personal responsibility of saving and investing for retirement. It just doesn’t seem realistic. Especially given our collective lack of financial literacy.

But when you tax a corporation, who are you taxing? When the corporation makes money, who does that money go to? When the money goes to the actual people working for the company, from the CEO to the assistant warehouse receiver, they get taxed then in the form of income tax. And there are other taxes involved when there are property taxes, sales tax, etc. We are taxing corporations when we tax the people who work and earn income through that corporation. Where things don't work properly today is with the small select few in those corporations who don't claim income because they substitute that income for stock considerations and they circumvent the taxing structure by getting taxed lower on larger earnings because they come as stocks rather than direct income. Fix that.

The corporation existing is a public good when they provide a place of employment for the public and produce something that benefits the public. Most corporations do this today. It doesn't matter what % of tax taxing the corporation used to represent because that was an entirely different world back then - corporations couldn't move to a different country and even if they could, there weren't a lot of options out there. That's not the world today, no matter how much we try to pretend otherwise.

[GannonFan]

My point, which I’ve made before, is corporate taxes once represented nearly 40% of revenues. Not to mention, the original idea of incorporation was to serve the public good. This typically involved public works projects and services like the Erie Canal. Perpetual private gain and generational wealth was not the intent.

But where are we going to make up that revenue today?

I agree in the personal responsibility of saving and investing for retirement. It just doesn’t seem realistic. Especially given our collective lack of financial literacy.

That is independent of Ganny's point - despite trump's America Only agenda (let's shed the erroneous America First label), we still live in an interconnected world where corporations can move their opertions elsewhere. We need corporate tax rates that encourage them to stay in the US and to keep jobs (and their tax revenue) in the US.

Should we look at how we tax, companies that are largely automated but still impact our transportation and other infrastructure? Yes.

Using lack of financial literacy as a reason for the government to get more involved in retirement planning rather than an opportunity to teach people financial literacy will make the country dumber and ultimately less successful IMO.

What company is largely automated, i.e. no or few employees? I couldn't think of an example of what you're referring to.

And yes, for retirement, we have to do better. I agreed with the pushback of not privatizing Social Security back during the W years because, as one of my grandmothers pointed out, what do we do with the folks who blow it when it comes to properly investing on their own? Because there will be many, many who do this.

[UNI88]

That is independent of Ganny's point - despite trump's America Only agenda (let's shed the erroneous America First label), we still live in an interconnected world where corporations can move their opertions elsewhere. We need corporate tax rates that encourage them to stay in the US and to keep jobs (and their tax revenue) in the US.

Should we look at how we tax, companies that are largely automated but still impact our transportation and other infrastructure? Yes.

Using lack of financial literacy as a reason for the government to get more involved in retirement planning rather than an opportunity to teach people financial literacy will make the country dumber and ultimately less successful IMO.

What company is largely automated, i.e. no or few employees? I couldn't think of an example of what you're referring to.

And yes, for retirement, we have to do better. I agreed with the pushback of not privatizing Social Security back during the W years because, as one of my grandmothers pointed out, what do we do with the folks who blow it when it comes to properly investing on their own? Because there will be many, many who do this.

The automation is forward looking. We're not there yet but we're on our way, it's more a matter of when not if. How do you pay for infrastructure when a plant, delivery vehicles/methods, etc. are largely automated? It's a future problem but one we'd be smart to be considering now.

My "rant" on social security:

• I see all these social media posts about it being "my money" and not welfare. That's partially true - people get back more than what they pay in plus interest. That extra isn't "their money" or welfare, it's money from people who didn't live long enough to collect.
• I think social security should be a defined contribution plan, you get what you pay in plus interest and your heirs get what you leave behind.
• I would like to have some control over how my social security is invested but I get that some would blow it. That's why the choices would need to be limited. I don't think it would be that big of a stretch to go from absolutely no control to having a limited number of choices with guiderails.
• I would have a lot more social security income available in retirement if I could have put some of it into equities. Yes, there would have been ups and downs but the ups would have crushed the downs over the course of 40+ years of working.

Could we still have folks who blow it? Yes but I am a small l Libertarian so I don't think a little Darwinism is a bad thing. Personal responsibility is an important part of personal freedom.

[Caribbean Hen]

Lower corporate taxes have very likely benefited a lot or people saving for retirement. Defined benefit pension plans are going away for valid reasonr. I would much rather rely on the market to help build and maintain my retirement nest egg then be dependent on government programs. We should be encouraging and teaching people how to be at least basic investors not demonizing the market.

My point, which I’ve made before, is corporate taxes once represented nearly 40% of revenues. Not to mention, the original idea of incorporation was to serve the public good. This typically involved public works projects and services like the Erie Canal. Perpetual private gain and generational wealth was not the intent.

But where are we going to make up that revenue today?

I agree in the personal responsibility of saving and investing for retirement. It just doesn’t seem realistic. Especially given our collective lack of financial literacy.

We’re not.

The national debt cannot be repaid in a traditional way.

It’s pretty selfish of you to want millionaires and billionaires to fund everything

I’ve been talking about the lack of financial literacy taught in schools for a few decades.

Spoiled Rotten and politicians want to keep it that way because being a politician is very lucrative…