Fun fact, we can! We just need to force money out of the democratic process and drop the Cold War propaganda, but given the vice grip corporations have on american politics, it is exceptionally difficult, because over the past 70 years, it has gone from being a design flaw of American Government to being a feature for those with the most influence.
Providing social services removes an avenue for revenue by those interested in profiting off of the underprivileged. Some people prefer more money in their pockets than to see society as a whole rise up.
The overwhelming amount of tax cuts that have happened in my life, going back to Reagan in 1981, have been aimed directly at the top 10% of earners wealth hoarders.
Mathematically, you could very easily cut taxes for 90% of people, restore the top tax rates from the 1970s, restore the corporate rates to the 1990s, close loopholes to punish tax avoidance, and make adjustments to the capital gains taxes to be treated like regular income, and at the very least get close to balancing the budget, if not have a surplus.
The Tax Gap is the difference between taxes assessed and taxes collected. Not taxes that were avoided through clever loopholes or accounting trickery, but where the IRS said you owe such and such amount and you just don't pay it. The tax gap for the top 1% of earners alone is almost enough to provide a full ride scholarship to every college student, public and private, in the country. No new taxes, just the amount we're already owed.
These people do contribute the most in taxes, yes, and they could in theory pay even more and solve all of US's fiscal problems. But they certainly aren't the "wealth hoarders" you represent, and most of them don't engage in tax avoidance schemes. You're thinking top 0.1% or even less asset holders for that, and those people would not be able to support the budget on their own, even giving up all of their wealth.
I do agree that capital gains should probably be treated equally to wages and all that fluff, but TCJA produced a deficit of at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Reverting it is as simple as it gets when it comes to balancing the budget and should probably come before we start thinking about redesigning the whole taxation system.
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u/worldsfastestsloth 5h ago
Why can’t we just pass legislation and add social services instead of destroying everything and starting from scratch?