Where did my taxes go?

4/15/2026 at 6:18:30 PM

Many Americans do not realize how much money the US government spends. When you include all three levels, it comes to $32K/person/year [0]. This is much higher than countries that are considered "social democracies" such as Finland, France and Canada. If you look at wealthy blue cities like NYC or SF, the spending is on the order of $50K/p/y, comparable to Norway.

It is not realistic to believe that we can become a nice wholesome European country if we just raise taxes a bit. The extra money will just be squandered and stolen.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

by d_burfoot

4/15/2026 at 7:02:44 PM

I think many Americans do not realize how much is spent on debt interest payments, which are a tidy source of income for rich people.

by jl6

4/15/2026 at 7:48:42 PM

> I think many Americans do not realize how much is spent on debt interest payments, which are a tidy source of income for rich people.

Not to mention insurance companies and pension funds, plus local, state, and foreign governments

by tomwheeler

4/15/2026 at 7:20:00 PM

I don’t think Americans would enjoy the alternative of defaulting on that debt, or the counterfactual of not having raised that debt in the first place

But yeah, having to pay your debts do suck

by vslira

4/15/2026 at 8:44:15 PM

> or the counterfactual of not having raised that debt in the first place

I'm pretty sure most of us would enjoy a different timeline where we didn't sink over $1 trillion in the Iraq war or another $2 trillion on the F-35, where we didn't mindlessly increase the military budget every cycle, where Republican administrations didn't cut taxes on the wealthy every time they won the presidency in the last half century, or where the TSA and DHS weren't created.

by atmavatar

4/15/2026 at 9:31:10 PM

[flagged]

by Rekindle8090

4/15/2026 at 9:39:47 PM

What do you think debt means?

Every item I mentioned either increased government spending or reduced its income, both of which contribute to increased deficits and debt.

You're welcome to argue whether I'm correct that americans would be better off without any of them, but it's simple math that every single one of them contributed to our current debt.

by atmavatar

4/15/2026 at 10:06:49 PM

If you don't count the quote (which I never do because it's not the words of the commenter), they only wrote one long sentence.

by alsetmusic

4/15/2026 at 8:38:10 PM

But they didn’t scream when that debt ballooned very recently.

Debt payments and defense budget increases add up.

by browningstreet

4/15/2026 at 6:26:05 PM

Is the amount proportional to the per capita income of the respective countries?

by xeromal

4/15/2026 at 6:55:36 PM

If you do tax revenue as % of GDP, you get the US falling at about 25%, with the OECD average sitting around 35%.

by icegreentea2

4/15/2026 at 7:10:40 PM

> It is not realistic to believe that we can become a nice wholesome European country if we just raise taxes a bit. The extra money will just be squandered and stolen.

Why, in your view, doesn't the same thing happen to them?

by zahlman

4/15/2026 at 7:24:00 PM

Simply put the people in those countries who spend the money care about the people who gave them the money.

They view themselves as stewards of these resources and genuinely want to spend them optimally to ensure the best return for everyone in society including future generations.

That isn't the case in America and will never be the case.

America is a failed state.

by Teever

4/15/2026 at 8:11:53 PM

I would not put this on America being a failed state. Rather the more 'successful' European countries are far more homogenous in demographics than America ever will be. In Denmark, nearly everyone has the same cultural background and similar values, and are striving for a relatively unified vision/goal for the country. In America, there is such an overwhelming diversity in values and cultures, and added animosity between different groups of people that there is more infighting over government&private resources and less efficient use of them.

by animal_spirits

4/15/2026 at 8:38:04 PM

> Rather the more 'successful' European countries are far more homogenous in demographics than America ever will be. In Denmark, nearly everyone has the same cultural background and similar values, and are striving for a relatively unified vision/goal for the country.

Can you explain this reasoning without implying American political leaders (or perhaps broader society) are racist?

As a counterpoint France, Germany, Canada and Australia are far from homogeneous, but offer far stronger social safety nets than the US. IIRC, 1 in 4 Australians were born elsewhere.

by overfeed

4/15/2026 at 11:11:00 PM

> Can you explain this reasoning without implying American political leaders (or perhaps broader society) are racist?

Why would we need to do that?

by BrenBarn

4/16/2026 at 1:54:21 PM

Is it really on just the political leaders and not the society at large that supports them?

One need not go that far back in history to learn that codified in the legal system was the concept of separate but equal, red lining,, etc. Lynchings were often ignored and thus a public spectacle.

Today you still see the public discourse about women’s rights (e.g potentially jail for abortion in certain states…regardless of the reason), debates on mass migrations/immigration (e.g. little sympathy for legal citizens being deported or killed by ICE, etc).

Public agreement on these issues is a prerequisite to social safety nets.

American history is plagued with examples such as these that have contributed to the culture of rugged individualism.

Perhaps the closest period where some semblance of social safety net wins were achieved were in the FDR years (eg social security), and that was mainly through labor unions / working class pressure.

Do those counterpoint countries have similar histories? and were their social safety nets not from the side of labor vs capital?

by sharts

4/15/2026 at 9:30:20 PM

Downvote all you want, but y'all still haven't explicitly named the linkage between demographic diversity and American tax policy vis-a-vis threadbare social safety. Instead of asking the reader to fill in the gaps, I challenge anyone who believes it to explain the mechanism linking the diversity prior/stimulus to the tax policy result, and why it only happens in America.

by overfeed

4/16/2026 at 2:23:11 PM

America is broadly racist, that's exactly my point!

by animal_spirits

4/17/2026 at 7:44:50 AM

So the root problem isn't the amount of "diversity", but racism.

by overfeed

4/20/2026 at 1:39:09 AM

Sure. But it is brought to the surface due to diversity. I imagine many European nations are close to if not equal in their racism but are not brought face to face with it because their cultures are not quite as diverse.

by animal_spirits

4/20/2026 at 5:15:07 AM

> But it is brought to the surface due to diversity.

If Americans continue to believe that racism is inherent in them (and everyone else, including Europe), then I see no hope[1] for achieving any kind of reform that benefits the majority with regards to social safety nets.

> I imagine many European nations are close to if not equal in their racism but are not brought face to face with it because their cultures are not quite as diverse.

This smells like a variation of the just-world fallacy; European countries harbor some fervent animus towards the Romani, but not enough to cut their nose to spite their face as Americans do.

1. My lack of hope is somewhat tempered because America has proved that it can overcome some bigotry from the past: lots of formerly targeted groups are now having a much better time in the present: the Chinese, Irish, Greeks, Italians, Japanese and Jewish people. So, things can change.

by overfeed

4/15/2026 at 10:00:49 PM

In a place as diverse as America, democracy starts to resemble a racial headcount. Elections start to hinge on explicit appeals to particular ethnicities or sub groups. Political parties are very loud about this and they don’t try to hide it at all. I thought it was clear why this only happens in America (the aforementioned diversity).

by remarkEon

4/15/2026 at 11:12:56 PM

what does this have to do with tax policy?

by bdangubic

4/16/2026 at 3:41:47 AM

If some groups are disproportionately benefited by certain social spending while a different group is disproportionately impacted by the associated taxes to fund said spending, you get a divergence in the ability to burden share across groups (this is the case in the United States). As a result of this, spending is funded by debt.

by remarkEon

4/16/2026 at 10:47:25 AM

You think that Europe is more homogeneous than the USA? First time I my life I hear that argument.

by ekjhgkejhgk

4/16/2026 at 2:20:13 PM

Individual European nations are, not Europe as a whole entity.

by animal_spirits

4/15/2026 at 10:20:17 PM

[dead]

by srslyTrying2hlp

4/16/2026 at 1:46:57 AM

[flagged]

by idiotsecant

4/16/2026 at 2:22:30 PM

That's not the only way at all; all I'm saying is it becomes harder to convince the whole of society to adopt social safety nets if they positively affect people that look/act different from someone. I'm just trying to be honest that many many many Americans are racists.

by animal_spirits

4/16/2026 at 8:16:53 PM

I understand, that's a much more reasonable take than I implied, mea culpa!

by idiotsecant

4/15/2026 at 10:18:54 PM

[dead]

by srslyTrying2hlp

4/15/2026 at 7:04:50 PM

>It is not realistic to believe that we can become a nice wholesome European country if we just raise taxes a bit.

This feels like a strawman. I can't recall ever hearing someone advocate for raising taxes and not changing a single other thing about the government. These ideas are all interconnected and someone advocating for increased taxes very likely has ideas about how spending should change too.

by slg

4/15/2026 at 7:14:50 PM

That's like increasing your going out budget at the same time as moderating your excessive drinking.

The more money that's up for grabs, the higher the incentives for fraud and general abuse.

I think the people that believe in a more efficient welfare state should look to reallocate the money. No one would complain. Instead it's always the promise that just [X] more billion from [billionaire] and we could solve homelessness

by bko

4/15/2026 at 7:45:46 PM

>I think the people that believe in a more efficient welfare state should look to reallocate the money. No one would complain.

Are you simply calling the entire government a "welfare state" or do you believe that something like military spending is off the table for making more efficient? Because people very obviously would complain about shifting military spending to social programs and military spending is almost certainly the biggest differentiator in spending between us and those "'social democracies' such as Finland, France and Canada" that OP was talking about.

by slg

4/15/2026 at 8:17:01 PM

Of course you should make military spending more efficient. But again, to avoid partisan bickering, you should shift spending in the category. Don't cut waste in department A and allocate to department B. Maybe shift from buying fewer jets and more drones. It doesn't have to be political, it's not a money problem. Government takes more than enough money.

Again, percentage of government money that goes to social programs is less relative to military, but only as a percentage. Look at things like spending on public healthcare (Medicare / Medicaid) or public education, America spends as much as social democracies in absolute terms. Just relative terms its less because we're a wealthy country and produce a lot of wealth that we tax. It's not a money problem

by bko

4/15/2026 at 8:38:16 PM

> But again, to avoid partisan bickering, you should shift spending in the category... It doesn't have to be political, it's not a money problem.

We can't really have this conversation from the mindset that the status quo is inherently apolitical. The US spends more than those "social democracies" on the military in both absolute and relative terms. Since total spending is the same, that means we also spend less on social programs in relative terms. These are all political choices and refusing to revisit a previous political choice is an active political choice.

by slg

4/17/2026 at 8:42:50 AM

This is in part because those countries have been historically reliant on the US for their national defense…

by jolux

4/15/2026 at 7:58:57 PM

Military spending has been trending downwards the entire time I’ve been alive. All that’s happened is increased spending elsewhere and even more debt. With very little apparent improvement to those social services spending outcomes. Usually the the opposite.

I might agree with cutting military spending if it’s an actual measurable impact to my finances. But I sure wouldn’t be for reallocating it to the black hole that is other federal spending. Fix the outcomes first. We already spend more on healthcare than most of those social democracies. Show me similar outcomes per dollar spent and then we can have a conversation about increasing it. Until then, it’s just more money funneled to the fraud and grift machine. Not that the military isn’t that too, but the difference to me is once you get the population “hooked” on such budgets you can never reduce it. The military is at least able to be reduced as shown in the past 30 years. Everything else is growing faster than those reductions.

I would also be generally for cutting military budget if it was 100% reallocated to reducing the debt. But that’s almost impossible since money is fungible.

TLDR; we’ve already tried reallocating and utterly failed at showing any reasonable outcomes.

by phil21

4/15/2026 at 8:03:59 PM

Maybe we should approach this from the opposite angle. If it isn't military spending, what do you think the differentiator is between the US and those "social democracies" that OP mentioned? Do you think Americans are inherently more corrupt than the French?

by slg

4/15/2026 at 8:45:35 PM

> Do you think Americans are inherently more corrupt than the French?

I'm not who you asked (and I think the levels of military spending in the US are a huge problem) but IMO Americans are not inherently more corrupt than the French but they are currently much more tolerant of corruption than the French.

It is hard to imagine the level of corruption currently being openly flaunted by parts of the USA government happening in France without the country burning down.

Whether or not this tolerance is inherent or is the result of both learned helplessness and real disempowerment through the US government having already failed the average citizen for so long is up for debate.

by georgemcbay

4/15/2026 at 10:02:50 PM

Military spending is not the driver of the debt, social and welfare spending is. And yes, it is off the table.

by remarkEon

4/15/2026 at 9:03:31 PM

[dead]

by srslyTrying2hlp

4/15/2026 at 6:48:35 PM

> When you include all three levels, it comes to $32K/person/year

Which is why these calculators should tell people who pay less than $32K that they are getting supported by the 5% who pay most of the taxes...

by fortran77

4/15/2026 at 7:21:00 PM

we should also break it down by state and determine distribution of electoral college votes based on it

by bdangubic

4/15/2026 at 8:56:30 PM

> they are getting supported by the 5% who pay most of the taxes

The same 5% who in many cases run massively profitable companies that pay their workers on the bottom so much less than a living wage that they are forced into tax-funded social safety net programs like SNAP to survive.

That 5% can cry me a river about their tax burden.

by georgemcbay

4/15/2026 at 5:29:31 PM

As a thought experiment, it'd be interesting to imagine how things would play out if each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go.

Agencies could recommend funding levels, Congress could recommend an allocation and if a taxpayer didn't change it, that default would take effect. But if a taxpayer preferred, they could say, "no, I won't be funding DOD this year". Or space nerds might say "I'm sending 100% of my tax dollars to NASA!"

Of course no one would likely choose to do boring stuff like paying interest on debt. So we'd probably end up with incredibly well-funded national parks and cool space missions, and also a crippling recession due to defaulting on the national debt.

by lastofthemojito

4/15/2026 at 5:58:17 PM

It is interesting because in a roundabout way this is essentially asking what taxes are for in the first place. You will probably get some kind of “tyranny of the majority/rich”.

For example, if you have a country on the older side, most people will vote to heavily fund social security at the expense of education. As the demographics change, would be no mechanism to correct the issue. Demographics become destiny.

Similarly, taxes allow rich areas to prop up poor areas of the country. California subsidizes the majority of states for example.

Part of the genius of taxes as a technology is that it allows (forces) a large group of people to coordinate to solve problems that they wouldn’t have otherwise. In the ideal case, it allows smart, forward thinking people to solve collective issues.

by janalsncm

4/15/2026 at 7:07:11 PM

> California subsidizes the majority of states for example.

California doesn't pay taxes though, people in California do.

Not trying to be pedantic but this is a common framing that is, at its core, completely incorrect. States don't subsidize states because taxes aren't earmarked based on what state they came out of, it's all just government reallocation of wealth by one means or another.

Even if you were to accept this framing, California's net contribution does not cover the shortfall from 26 states, so the statement would be wrong even if it wasn't deceptive.

by pc86

4/15/2026 at 7:19:37 PM

The point is that taxes can be allocated to things you do not directly benefit from.

I am aware of the fact that states do not subsidize states, but actually drilling down to the taxpayer level makes the argument even stronger. As long as there are regional differences in benefits from federal funding, you get the same effect.

The farming states benefit disproportionately from farm subsidies. Oil producing states benefit disproportionately from oil subsidies. And states near DC benefit disproportionately from federal bureaucracies.

by janalsncm

4/15/2026 at 6:39:10 PM

On principle collective issues can be solved, effectively many pay over 50% taxes (accounting for all taxes) yet not all issues are solved.

One could deduct taxes aren't solving collective issues, otherwise there wouldn't be any given The U.S is the biggest economy in the world yet millions can't even effort decent Healthcare.

by hirako2000

4/15/2026 at 7:07:12 PM

> For example, if you have a country on the older side, most people will vote to heavily fund social security at the expense of education

You don't even need a country to be on the older side. Canada's age demographic distribution is normal compared to other countries but since the older population has greater political capital (they donate and vote more), they predominantly benefit from political action at the expense of the younger class. The Liberal party won the previous election in large part by stoking fear in boomers about Trump and the USA, while ignoring issues that the younger generation faces.

In 2015, Canada ranked well above the US and 5th on the World Happiness Report. We now rank 25th. If you break that down by demographics, Canadians over 60 still rank in the top 10, but Canadians under 25 rank 71st. It's the largest gap between the young and the old of all developed nations, and a key indicator of what the priorities of government have resulted in.

Another indicator: For the first time in recorded Canadian history, men over 65 now out-earn men aged 25 to 34. Youth unemployment is ~15%. More than one in five young Canadians is underemployed. Young Canadians under 45 have seen virtually no real income growth since 2000.

by slopinthebag

4/15/2026 at 6:12:36 PM

Organizations don't work well when their budget can change dramatically from one year to the next. There's no ability to take on long-term plans when another, popular department takes 50% of your budget, or someone in your PR department makes a gaffe. Long-term employees get laid off and won't return in a few years when your budget goes back up.

by jerlam

4/15/2026 at 7:46:31 PM

Off on a bit of a tangent, I 100% agree with you, and that was probably the best feature of California's Prop 13 from 1978. After it passed, the projected income to Sacramento was rock-solid for decades. California doesn't have an income problem; it has a spending problem.

Still, I would welcome the opportunity to let Sacramento know that, in my opinion, they spend too much on education and welfare and not enough on infrastructure.

by degrees57

4/15/2026 at 6:24:24 PM

Could have the slider pull the budget in that direction over the course of 5-10 years, instead of having it reflected immediately in the next year.

by ambicapter

4/15/2026 at 5:35:38 PM

I always think as an individual I would like this. But at scale I worry it would incentivize each department to advertise themselves to the public, which seems to me like a waste of funds. I already dislike the reelection cycle (politicians incentivized to always be fundraising) and would hate to see that happen per department.

by fimoreth

4/15/2026 at 5:39:39 PM

It would probably be wasteful initially but I doubt it would be more wasteful than bad policy that doesn't actually prioritize what the electorate wants.

by cucumber3732842

4/15/2026 at 5:40:45 PM

Whatever hypothetical law allowed individual citizens to allocate funds could also ban departments from advertising or misrepresenting what they do.

by janalsncm

4/15/2026 at 5:44:03 PM

Thank gosh we didn't just have a huge scandal where DHS secretary Kristi Noem spent 220 million on advertising.

by munk-a

4/15/2026 at 6:07:15 PM

Well since it’s a hypothetical, we can also stipulate that laws are enforced.

by janalsncm

4/15/2026 at 9:23:39 PM

The police do something similar when a mayoral candidate promises to rein in police spending, it's called the blue flu and it's basically a strike.

by jerlam

4/15/2026 at 11:43:40 PM

I find it odd that the people with the kind of mindset that is driven to become police are even willing to entertain the idea of joining a union.

by joquarky

4/16/2026 at 2:53:36 PM

Well theirs is good, of course, because it protects them from soft-on-crime liberals who want open borders and communism and want to keep them from doing their jobs with ridiculous "ethical standards" and "laws governing acceptable use of force" and "civil rights" and other stupid pro-criminal shit like that.

by lamasery

4/15/2026 at 5:40:12 PM

Does PBS still do telethons like in days of old?

by fhdkweig

4/16/2026 at 2:49:51 PM

You would get so much weird shit happening if you did this.

For example, if you ask your average normal person who's critical of foreign aid spending how much they think we should spend on it, if they don't answer "zero dollars" (and most don't!) they're very likely to name a percent of the budget that would represent a huge increase in our foreign aid spending. This is because they think it's a far larger part of the budget than it is (probably because it's received such a huge amount of attention that they assume it must be a lot, or else why would their trusted media figures complain about it so much?)

Misconceptions like that abound. Like, you wanna guess where most people are gonna shift some of that money if you remind them to make sure they allow enough funding for maintaining our nuclear weapon stockpile, but don't tell them exactly where to put that money? I bet it's not the Department of Energy.

Moreover, this would just incentivize politicians for both nefarious and benevolent reasons to bundle unrelated stuff into departments that people choose to fund better, laundering their popularity into necessary-but-obscure services or pet-project/corruption stuff.

by lamasery

4/15/2026 at 5:34:44 PM

I would guess that's a poor thought experiment, because most of us - myself included - don't have a good grasp of what various things cost to make work. And then when you look at the relative points on the sliders you think "Oh, but X is much more critical than Y, surely I can't spend so little on it relative to my spending on Y".

Not to mention the complex semantics and effects of debt in sovereign finance, and actions like increasing or decreasing the money supply etc.

by einpoklum

4/15/2026 at 5:40:30 PM

You'd also have some very large but currently unknowable number of people underfunding Medicare and Social Security but still expecting to be able to draw out of it when they're older and demanding they be allowed to do so when they're seniors.

by csoups14

4/15/2026 at 5:49:02 PM

I would guess that we don't know because we don't interact with it at all and this would have us interact with it. No doubt that few people would really study very hard or that this would suddenly make everyone experts, but I suppose having to deal with it a tiny bit might lead to a tiny sense of the mechanics or scale. Like when you have to sit through the airplane safety talk, my guess is most people are still just going to thrash around over seats in an emergency of maybe ask each other what to do, but I guess people now know they're supposed to wear their seatbelts or that there's a mask in the ceiling? And you also probably do get a few more citizen experts than you had before.

Still, yeah, as an experiment it doesn't seem likely to work. There is probably something to putting people a little closer to the action though.

by cm11

4/15/2026 at 6:10:36 PM

I live in a place with basically zero property taxes (except a pittance for the school). No public roads, no fire, almost no police, no parks, no public utilities.

It's absolutely glorious. I can buy exactly what I need. My monthly utility bills are way lower than anywhere else I've lived.

I cannot believe the populace has been duped into thinking so much of what we fund so direly must be done publicly that armed tax agents need to drag them to prison if they refuse to fund it that way. It is important to remember that everything that is taxed, the underlying method that will be used to enforce that is violence, and very carefully limiting that employ of mass violence.

by mothballed

4/15/2026 at 7:15:12 PM

> I live in a place with basically zero property taxes

The biggest financial culture shock between the UK and the US is the property tax situation. The UK has a "council tax" paid by the _occupier_ (i.e. the renter, if a house is rented) that pays for local services, and it's in the low thousands of pounds per year regardless of the value of a house.

by jen20

4/15/2026 at 6:53:22 PM

> no fire

Trying to think of a place where there is no chance of fire and all I’m coming up with is the moon

by jrflowers

4/15/2026 at 8:44:20 PM

A lot of places (e.g the village i live in) have volunteer fire teams which only really need equipment and training, it’s much cheaper than having a 24/7 paid fire department.

Obviously doesn’t scale to a city.

by cyberpunk

4/15/2026 at 6:39:07 PM

I think a ranking system might be easier. People are good at ranking priorities.

The idea breaks down for the rich who are being taxed the most, because nobody wants them to have any say.

You could maybe do it for some percentage of taxes. Perhaps only for things that are desirable but not necessities (maybe Symphonies, science, high arts funding, sports funding, humanities education, BBC, other things people think they shouldn't pay for).

Although that would make people ask for a slider to reduce their taxes (to zero, thank you).

by robocat

4/15/2026 at 5:57:57 PM

I like your idea, and I wish that it could be practically implemented.

As with voting, implementing your idea would be subject to exploitation. For it to work, you would need a way of ensuring that each taxpayer/voter was authorized to vote, and voted only once. You would need to somehow prevent "harvesting" too.

Those who have an interest in exploiting the system would lobby for built-in weaknesses that they could exploit.

by anonymousiam

4/15/2026 at 11:36:12 PM

> As a thought experiment, it'd be interesting to imagine how things would play out if each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go.

Change that to "allocation where they personally would like the entire budget to go." Otherwise, this is a recipe for an even worse power imbalance than we have today. The rich (who pay more taxes, and therefore whose sliders are more powerful) would have a greater influence on the budget than the poor, in your system.

by ryandrake

4/15/2026 at 6:58:35 PM

This line of reasoning seems to be without any deeper thought.

If taxpayers should have the freedom to decide how the money that is taken from them is spent, then why shouldn't they have the freedom to decide how much money they pay?

If taxes aren't collected because the ends justify the means, then the only other option is that they are collected to punish the taxpayers.

The former can be morally justifiable, but how do you justify the latter?

by carlosjobim

4/16/2026 at 12:41:17 PM

In Poland in annual tax declaration one can select to which non-profit organization will go 2% of total income tax.

by ponector

4/15/2026 at 5:57:32 PM

I would be happy if all the laws both at the state and federal level were under version control and we could see who added each line.

by tmaly

4/15/2026 at 6:56:56 PM

I like this idea, but limit it to $1000. Everything in government is funded, but each person can direct $1000 to general fund, a specific department, an initiative, or a registered non-profit.

by mekdoonggi

4/15/2026 at 5:40:46 PM

Look, we spend a lot on things people want, right? We are living in your sliders world.

I hate these sorts of websites because they have a very intellectual starch to them but are very superficial. I also hate this frame of mind that's like, "nobody would choose to do boring stuff." People aren't stupid. I hate this "voters are stupid" frame of mind. It's unelectable, and it's always said by people who complain about political problems because they misunderstand and think that political problems are math problems. Like that all we need are more sliders. In this specific case, people love paying mortgages, they instantly understand the math of interest rates, and many many people are strongly incentivized to help people understand the magic of mortgages: that you get to both live in the thing you buy, which is useful, and that because you're living in it, people are willing to loan you 10x more than your income to buy it, a kind of leverage that isn't available anywhere else but people who will cut your fingers off if you don't pay them. We are living in your sliders world.

by doctorpangloss

4/15/2026 at 6:40:28 PM

>Look, we spend a lot on things people want, right?

I'd say we spend a lot on things a few people who can maintain/expand power see ROI for power on. Sometimes that's things, sometimes that's just cash for voters and future voters.

The sliders world is more about consent via revenues of the governed, rather than the tax crop they really are.

by 9x39

4/15/2026 at 7:54:49 PM

we can go into an actual, interesting conversation about government spending. personally, i think your pessimistic, slightly nihilist, "people who can maintain/expand power" POV is just a different side of the same "voters are stupid" coin, in that it is also unelectable (no Mag7 CEO or top-500 billionaire could win an election today, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk even pay huge commissions to study it for them, and anyway, most of the top-500s are heirs, and the ones who are only slightly less wealthy but way, way less powerful lose elections all the time) but appeals to this cynical, conspiracy-minded BS that distracts from hard truths like:

people like paying for medical innovations. people are consenting to that. i mean, they certainly feel it is unfair when they have something they must pay for in order to survive, but in general, people have been choosing "expensive medical innovations" as an alternative to "dying" since the advent of the venture pharmaceutical system.

slider world CANNOT fix the problem that for some people, medical innovations are expensive. people will pay ANY price to cure a terminal illness suffered by their child, for example - there is no MARKET PRICE or AUCTION PRICE or VALID PRICE, i mean you can put a number into the slider, but you can see how "average of current + creditable worth" would be the answer to "what would you pay to cure your kid's terminal illness?"

and this is so, so much more interesting to talk about than taxes or vague nihilism about power. but no. it's too unorthodox. are you getting it? the website is stupid, why is it so hard to say that?

by doctorpangloss

4/15/2026 at 11:38:25 PM

I really wanted to peek at the site, but I came too late and didn't get to see it and still can't get it to load. I'm familiar with the discretionary vs non-discretionary entitlement breakdowns of the first 10-20 line items of the federal budget as you are, and it's uninteresting to me to complain about individual programs' worthiness because the problem is their aggregate bulk and the (unfixable?) incentives involved.

1. do you think slider world depends on the taxed having meaningful influence over spending? im thinking power split btw the diffused tax base vs the concentrated beneficiaries and the interests that allocated the spending

2. terminal illness breaks our price mechanism - what would we pay for our kid, another 20 years of life, to walk again, etc? but are we agreeing or disagreeing that solving things perfectly isn't the goal (with slider world, or today's system), and maybe isn't even possible? Fed gov doesn't have to work perfectly, it just needs to work.

by 9x39

4/15/2026 at 6:14:15 PM

> We are living in your sliders world

To some extent? But the sliders would probably be even more extreme. If you are 70 years old you’ll probably vote to put everything on Uncle Sam’s credit card and let younger generations deal with it after you’re dead.

by janalsncm

4/15/2026 at 5:30:22 PM

If the sliders applied only to discretionary spending, it might work.

by mitthrowaway2

4/15/2026 at 5:32:37 PM

"crippling recession due to defaulting" - we will just borrow more as usual. Not like our taxes are enough to fund the nation in any year (war or no war).

by silentsea90

4/15/2026 at 6:05:40 PM

Eventually the lenders will stop lending. That's what leads to the defaulting scenario in the first place.

by babypuncher

4/15/2026 at 9:03:36 PM

Why will they stop lending? The US government could ably wipe them and their entire family and replace it with a more cooperative lender. There’s no higher authority to enforce anything.

by guzfip

4/15/2026 at 9:49:20 PM

Make charitable donations voluntary? What a novel idea :D

by SergeyKa

4/15/2026 at 6:33:14 PM

Sure. I'd set all mine to zero, and keep the money.

by SoftTalker

4/15/2026 at 10:57:33 PM

>each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go.

If that were the case, I'd go all in on hookers and blow.

by GetTheFacts

4/16/2026 at 12:04:08 AM

> The federal government spends $222k per second

by janalsncm

4/16/2026 at 4:44:02 PM

Way to non-sequitur! You go, girlfriend!

by GetTheFacts

4/15/2026 at 5:56:54 PM

Taxes do not fund spending. This is a foundational myth of neoliberalism, closely related to the "A national economy is run like a household" myth.

The alternative is Modern Monetary Theory, which states that the government and banking sector money creation fund spending, and governments cannot run out of currency.

Taxes control the money supply and mop up excess funds, which controls inflation.

Bonds set interest rates.

Spending is a strategic and political choice, not something limited by "the deficit" - which is literally just the difference between spending choices and taxation choices.

One very obvious tell is how Republicans make a lot of noise about the deficit and the debt, but always raise both when they're in office.

Always. Why? Because they spend government money lavishly on themselves and their patrons, and cut taxes for themselves and their patrons.

This doesn't "create jobs", it clogs up the system with sclerotic piles of cash that drive an extractive economy that sits on top of the productive economy most people live in.

This is very different economically to stability spending - welfare, healthcare, and such - and investment spending, such as direct funding of education and R&D.

In the MMT, the most significant drivers of inflation are corporate profiteering and supply shocks.

Like oil crises. For example.

by TheOtherHobbes

4/15/2026 at 7:20:30 PM

This is also how I see it, and honestly it is hard to understand it any other way. In the current year, it seems very clear that governments can get away with incredible debt spending, as long as it's mostly in the right direction.

by verall

4/15/2026 at 6:04:57 PM

I feel like legislation that resulted in every taxpayer getting an itemized receipt like this would be hugely popular and a massive PR win for the representatives that sponsored it.

I can only conclude that the reason it hasn't been done is because they don't actually want you to know.

by ryandvm

4/15/2026 at 5:29:09 PM

This makes it sort of obvious how large the US welfare state is.

Medicaid: 10%

"Safety Net": 7.1%

Social Security: 22.6%

Medicare: 14.2%

53.9% of the federal budget is spent on welfare. That seems roughly in line with most Western nations.

by arjie

4/15/2026 at 5:32:42 PM

Unfortunately, much of that gets dispersed into an unfathomably complex web of private and profit-seeking interests, with much less actually going to individual beneficiaries.

by phillipcarter

4/15/2026 at 5:34:29 PM

Social Security almost entirely flows to beneficiaries, as do programs like SNAP, where overhead is around 6-7% (admittedly, fraud might be a good bit higher than that); likewise Medicare is one of the most efficient systems at getting money directly to medical providers (although fraud might be a problem there too, estimates range from 10%-25%).

by trollbridge

4/15/2026 at 5:41:08 PM

Yup, Medicaid and SNAP are extremely efficient. Social Security is almost completely disbursement charges but those disbursements aren't means tested so even quite wealthy individuals receive them. Additionally you mentioned that Medicare gets money to medical providers but I suspect that was meant to mean medical insurance providers - rather than health care providers (like doctors) since the system is partially direct payments but mostly runs through intermediary privatized companies and, of extreme note here, is that Medicare is famously barred from cost negotiations so while our Canadian healthcare system can talk to a pharma manufacturer and tell them "The price for this drug is unreasonable, we won't cover it unless it's cost competitive to biosimilars" Medicare just needs to roll over and accept whatever made up numbers it's given.

The benefits that are intended to go exclusively to the impoverished though, those are extremely means-tested and often have work requirements or other hoops to jump through.

by munk-a

4/15/2026 at 5:53:09 PM

> Social Security is almost completely disbursement charges but those disbursements aren't means tested so even quite wealthy individuals receive them.

Only to those who paid into the system and far less than they personally could have earned on investing the same dollars.

by RhysU

4/15/2026 at 6:41:50 PM

Yeah, one of the problems I have with taxes is that if I pay $100 into taxes I don’t get $100 of value back. Everyone should get at least as much as they put in back. Also, some other people should get more back. But we shouldn’t spend more than we make as a government.

by renewiltord

4/15/2026 at 8:59:09 PM

Many people do get more back than they put in. High earners do not:

> Most American workers receive significantly more from Social Security over their lifetimes than they contribute through payroll taxes.

https://legalclarity.org/is-social-security-worth-it-contrib...

by RhysU

4/15/2026 at 10:15:11 PM

> Everyone should get at least as much as they put in back

I don't even understand the thought process here. Taxes are not being used for productive investments. Some spending is growth, but probably not half.

I could see expecting the median citizen to be flat over their lifetime as a goal.

by Ntrails

4/15/2026 at 8:02:02 PM

Assuming the presence of a sovereign wealth fund which does work somewhat logically for programs like social security - that would make sense. The government should sensibly invest money they're holding onto... however, it's unrealistic to ever expect the government to tolerate a level of risk and thus a rate of return above what you're personally comfortable with so it's unrealistic to assume that the government will be as efficient with money as you'd personally be if they'd never taken that money.

Additionally, a lot of these programs will pay out beyond what you've personally put in - programs like Medicaid are nearly entirely social subsidies to ease poverty and financial distress, so I'm not certain where you'd find the money to pay for them if not looking at either other people's taxes or debt.

As a taxpayer I expect the money I give to the government to be evident in some social projects but I don't personally expect that for each dollar I pay that I'd see a dollar in benefit to me personally. I have a belief that I indirectly benefit from the expenditure of charitable safety net programs even if I never expect to collect from them directly - the improvement in the lives of those around me is to my personal benefit by making society more just and egalitarian as well as reducing the incentive for crime which is a difficult to measure but observable direct benefit to myself.

The fact that so much of our budget goes to debt servicing is probably my personal biggest objection as it is effectively just a wealth extraction from our earn national budget to some select individuals.

by munk-a

4/15/2026 at 5:36:26 PM

A lot just gets sucked up by 3rd parties of all stripes. Only ~20% of hospitals are for profit institutions for example.

by ch4s3

4/15/2026 at 6:16:13 PM

My daughter’s classmate’s father is a head of a non-profit hospital.

They have a 6k sqft house with a basketball court, pool and a pool house in the prime location in West Los Angeles.

They had to join two lots to build to their liking.

by tgrowazay

4/15/2026 at 6:35:26 PM

We call that "pulling an Altman" these days.

by shipman05

4/15/2026 at 7:55:45 PM

Would you expect that job to not pay well in a market where similar skills are directly transferable to running any mid sized corporation?

by ch4s3

4/15/2026 at 5:40:12 PM

Non-profit doesn't mean money-hating, though

by airstrike

4/15/2026 at 7:53:59 PM

No but it directly contradicts OP's claim of "profit-seeking interests".

by ch4s3

4/15/2026 at 9:40:39 PM

Individuals in such hospitals can still very much seek profit.

by airstrike

4/16/2026 at 2:04:55 PM

Care to explain what you mean specifically?

by ch4s3

4/16/2026 at 3:54:12 PM

Hospital Administrative Expenditures Exceed Direct Patient Care by Nearly 2x

https://www.trillianthealth.com/market-research/studies/hosp...

This one is ironic because they're touting the inflating admin headcount as a good thing:

https://www.athenahealth.com/resources/blog/expert-forum-ris...

by airstrike

4/15/2026 at 7:13:47 PM

>Only ~20% of hospitals are for profit institutions for example.

And the other 80% are little to no more efficient in terms of dollars input vs services rendered.

by cucumber3732842

4/15/2026 at 7:54:44 PM

I am merely commenting that profit seeking is not a sufficient explanation.

by ch4s3

4/15/2026 at 5:34:49 PM

I don’t think that’s true. US government services generally have very low overhead.

by jimbokun

4/15/2026 at 5:38:36 PM

It's quite true. Take Medicaid grants to states for example, which then goes out to 50 different systems of disbursement to private entities. Enrollees on plans are often done so through private insurers, many hospitals are run as for-profit including being owned by PE groups, etc.

by phillipcarter

4/15/2026 at 5:41:14 PM

And the intermediaries? And admin?

by airstrike

4/15/2026 at 7:02:04 PM

Not sure if this is comforting or distressing, but it's the same in all welfare states.

by BurningFrog

4/15/2026 at 5:35:07 PM

The US spends the most per capita[0] on healthcare in the world, all to receive a healthcare system that still requires lots of citizens to carry private insurance. I've never dug deep into why, but it sure is noteworthy.

0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health...

by K0nserv

4/15/2026 at 5:38:16 PM

The private insurance expenditure is part of that per capita number. US healthcare isn't "A system", its a number of interrelated systems that have lots of expensive hand-offs. We also spend a ton on lifestyles diseases because no one walks and culturally we eat like shit on average.

by ch4s3

4/15/2026 at 5:40:22 PM

> We also spend a ton on lifestyles diseases because no one walks and culturally we eat like shit on average.

And there's a pretty straight line between that and government subsidies for sugar and processed foods in general, not to mention car-based infrastructure, although the latter doesn't stop other countries from not having crippling obesity rates.

by phillipcarter

4/15/2026 at 7:53:13 PM

> And there's a pretty straight line between that and government subsidies for sugar and processed foods in general

No there isn't. Sugar subsidy accounts for 1.7 cents per 12-ounce can of soda. Soda in the US is generally inelastic, and research has shown that a 10% increase in price results in lessss than a 5% decrease in consumption. Americans just like sugar and sitting, culturally.

by ch4s3

4/15/2026 at 6:31:05 PM

And acknowledging the very obvious instances of regulatory capture that directly harm quality of life is political suicide for anyone with even the smallest amount of access to power.

It’s hard getting normies to admit that if soft drinks weren’t so heavily subsidized by the government at every step of manufacture and distribution, there would be less overall obesity.

by TimorousBestie

4/15/2026 at 5:58:57 PM

The graph shows both public and private expenditure. If you only consider the public per-capita expenditure it's more than every other nation on the graphs public + private per-capita spending.

by ihumanable

4/15/2026 at 7:36:58 PM

The data behind the graph is probably from OECD, which does not use a public/private classification. Mostly because in many OECD countries, "public" healthcare is largely funded by private insurance.

According to OECD data, US healthcare spending in 2023 was 28% from government schemes, 55% from health insurance, 11% out-of-pocket, and 5% from other sources. For most countries, the health insurance category is further split into compulsory and voluntary categories, but that distinction does not really exist in the US.

All US health insurance spending is reported in the compulsory health insurance category. Probably because the bulk of the spending is from employment-based insurance, which is effectively mandatory. (You usually can't opt out and take cash instead.) Naive aggregators then combine government spending and compulsory insurance and report that as public spending.

by jltsiren

4/16/2026 at 3:29:07 AM

That’s because we pay people well. A low level pharmacy benefits admin makes more than head of cybersecurity for the UK or a doctor in Germany. When you people well, your spending goes up. You can’t pay people a lot and have low spending.

by renewiltord

4/15/2026 at 6:02:53 PM

> I've never dug deep into why

The wealthy people that run insurance companies bribe our politicians to keep it that way.

by duped

4/15/2026 at 5:44:36 PM

The distribution itself does not tell you much; you have to normalize by the share of GDP (or some other measure of production/activity) that the federal budget constitutes.

Also, as other commenters mention, the specifics of how money is disbursed or spent, matters. If, say, pharmaceutical companies are allowed to massively over-charge, than the same level of care would mean a higher level of spending than in other world states.

by einpoklum

4/15/2026 at 5:39:09 PM

Playing devil's advocate - the measure of success of welfare isn't in the budget spent on it but public outcomes. That said, it is true more taxes or expenditure aren't the panacea that the left might think it is.

by silentsea90

4/15/2026 at 5:40:17 PM

If clinics and hospitals do not bill 1k dollars each visit, 100k+ for a simple surgery, and pharmacy does not sell medicine 10x the price, US gov't do not need that much allocation for healthcare.

by cidd

4/15/2026 at 7:03:31 PM

They only bill that much because they need the average amount of money collected for a procedure to pencil.

They get that cash price amount from a tiny amount of people, 70% of that price from private insurers, 30-60% from Medicare, less from Medicaid. Even then, they have to basically litigate the bills through private insurance appeals.

If they had one payer which had a single reimbursement rate, they wouldn't have to do these shenanigans.

by mekdoonggi

4/15/2026 at 5:37:55 PM

Given that reality, I wonder why it is that spending in this category seems to be so much less effective in the US relative to other nations? Why is the US #22 in general quality of life [1], and the bottom of many rankings of health system performance [2]?

Speaking as a Canadian, I wonder if at least part of it is the attitude that investments in these areas are "welfare" and not simply a part of the portfolio of essential services that are delivered by the state to citizens?

[1]: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/quality-...

[2]: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...

by mikepurvis

4/15/2026 at 5:44:35 PM

It may just be my cynicism talking, but it seems that it comes down to the power of lobbyists. In the US, the healthcare companies control the government. Elsewhere, the government controls the healthcare companies.

by fhdkweig

4/15/2026 at 6:09:16 PM

The media narrative is a factor too. Like I have extended family, friends, and work colleagues in the US, many of whom are wealthy and well-traveled and even a lot of them will still loudly assert obviously disprovable untruths like "well at least we don't die in waiting rooms like in Canada" or "at least we don't have death panels deciding who gets to have life-saving treatment" or worst of all "ehh I mean I have good insurance, and outcomes are much better here for top-5%ers, so I don't really care about the rest of the system." All while decades of TV hospital dramas depict a well-oiled medical system delivering effective and efficient care to people with nary a whisper about how it's getting paid for.

It's got to be desperately frustrating trying to fight this kind of thinking when you've got whole communities who have never even thought to question it.

My main hope at this point is with bottom-up type efforts. Let Mamdani show people that an effective city government can fill potholes and operate a few at-cost supermarkets. Let that be the start of citizens expecting more than chainsaw-waving and twitter meltdowns for their tax dollars.

by mikepurvis

4/16/2026 at 10:56:43 AM

> "at least we don't have death panels deciding who gets to have life-saving treatment"

They do, it's just that in the western world the death panels work for the government and optimize for "given a certain level of cost, how do we maximize lives saved", whereas in the USA the death panels work for insurance companies, and optimize for "reduce cost". The latter is a much easier job.

Maybe point your US friends to google "united healthcare denial rates" and check that it's 33%. That's the the death panel at work.

by ekjhgkejhgk

4/15/2026 at 7:14:02 PM

> Speaking as a Canadian, I wonder if at least part of it is the attitude that investments in these areas are "welfare" and not simply a part of the portfolio of essential services that are delivered by the state to citizens?

Also speaking as a Canadian, I don't understand the distinction you're drawing.

by zahlman

4/15/2026 at 7:26:36 PM

The distinction is in whether there's a value judgment. Is healthcare and welfare something we assume is part of the package living in a developed nation, or is it an indulgent extra, subject to suspicion and scrutiny above and beyond what essentials like military spending get?

I would say that the mainstream Canadian view is the opposite of this. We expect healthcare funding and many are supportive of the strikes when it gets cut, but we are much more likely to treat military budget as the purchase of a lot of unnecessary toys.

by mikepurvis

4/16/2026 at 4:34:56 PM

That depends on your definition of "welfare". For most Americans that means the government providing support for those who can't afford it (taking from the taxes of others).

Social Security isn't really welfare -- it's more like a nationwide retirement plan, whereby I'm getting X back in future dollars for Y paid in now.

Medicare isn't really welfare either -- it's medical insurance that I am paying for in advance.

(Now you can argue that a percentage of SS and Medicare is welfare because there is a floor on how much you receive regardless of what you put in, though you have to have paid in for at least 10 years to be eligible to receive anything.)

So that really just leaves Medicaid and Safety Net as true welfare: 17.1%.

by insane_dreamer

4/15/2026 at 5:32:08 PM

In line on price, but not on value.

If anything this speaks to the cost of welfare in America.

The corollary is that many suggestions to reduce welfare spending would lead to even less actual welfare being delivered, without addressing systemic cost problems.

by airstrike

4/16/2026 at 10:51:12 AM

My (admitedly superficial) understanding is that in the USA because the welfare state is mostly private, it optimizes for profit. So just because you put a lot into it doesn't mean you get much out. I have no first hand experience of this, but the other day I stumbled upon an article explaining private equity buying up the "ambulance business" and costs balooning, so that tracks.

by ekjhgkejhgk

4/15/2026 at 5:44:20 PM

That is the sad part, your money is wasted. You guys pay roughly as much in welfare, but get a tenth of it back.

by yohannparis

4/15/2026 at 5:42:42 PM

A big chunk of the "defense" budget is also healthcare and benefits for veterans.

by ForHackernews

4/15/2026 at 5:33:46 PM

Yet, people still meme how unsupportive the US is to its people.

The reality is the US operates the world's largest social services apparatus, including the world's largest public healthcare system.

by Alupis

4/15/2026 at 5:37:34 PM

Both can be true. US spends a ton but people feel the pain because the money is spent poorly

by silentsea90

4/15/2026 at 5:37:18 PM

The problem is that our public health care system could cover the entire country at no additional cost…if our health care spending per capita was inline with other nations with better health outcomes.

by jimbokun

4/15/2026 at 5:33:53 PM

The people paid for that welfare for themselves. Everything that helps people is a scare word. They’re too entitled to welfare!

by hyperhello

4/15/2026 at 5:33:19 PM

What would you rather have the government spend it's money on if not on the wellbeing/welfare of its citizens?

by altruios

4/15/2026 at 6:00:14 PM

Yes, if it was actually spent on welfare and not lost as friction in a system of cronies.

by atoav

4/15/2026 at 5:33:10 PM

One of the most generous welfare states with one of the best safety nets. I' not really aware of any place better. Maybe one of the small countries like Lichtenstein.

by trollbridge

4/15/2026 at 5:49:39 PM

Except the US doesn’t have universal healthcare, and other nations do.

by pennomi

4/15/2026 at 10:25:38 PM

[dead]

by srslyTrying2hlp

4/15/2026 at 5:35:31 PM

I can’t help wondering about the categorization. For example, we spend more on “agricultural subsidies” than “NASA & space” or “EPA & environment”, but for some reason the former gets hidden under the “all other” category while the latter two get their own distinct categories. The author might not have a political motivation for those choices, but it’s the kind of choice that will likely influence the political conclusions the reader will make from the data.

by slg

4/15/2026 at 5:48:44 PM

More and more I find my politics drifting towards whoever will balance the budget and pay down the deficit.

Since that party doesn’t exist I am politically homeless.

by pclowes

4/15/2026 at 6:00:11 PM

fun fact I discovered in this process: if the US just went back to 2019 spending (with 2025 tax revenue), there would be a $780B surplus.

by kacy

4/15/2026 at 6:25:50 PM

Just fixing federal budget growth to a figure slightly less than GDP growth would do the trick eventually. But we just can't bring ourselves to do it.

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

by kbelder

4/16/2026 at 12:54:42 AM

I did not know this, really puts a perspective on it, thanks

by pclowes

4/15/2026 at 6:42:43 PM

Why would anyone listen to the tax crop? Farmers don't listen to the cows.

by 9x39