You could drop the deficit by sooo much if you could tax the rich properly. And I do not mean like do not give them tax cuts or anything, which nobody should do anyway but also tax them higher in federal ways as well.
Rich people are actually taxed more. The US has seven income tax brackets ranging from 10% to 37% depending on how much you make. People who make over $560k annually pay 37%. There are also different brackets to include people who are single and married but paying taxes separately and people paying together. People earning up to $11k or thereabout pay the least taxes of 10%. So if you look at it people who earn more, pay way more taxes in this progressive system.
Whatever the amount of income you make you'll fall under one of 10, 12, 22, 24, 32, 35 or 37 per cent in tax.
Amazon paid zero federal taxes so many years, or so that is what I have been told at least, which means there must be so much tax that is gone just because they do not pay federal taxes, not just amazon but god knows how many companies. Plus when your stock portfolio goes up and you do not sell your stocks, you do not pay much tax I believe, or that is what I believe is the case in USA, I am not from there so these are all from what I read.
This is not true at all. It has been taken out of context to push several agendas. I agree that companies and people find different ways to avoid taxes, but in this particular case, it's incorrect.
This Forbes article explains it better All these combined plus a LOT LESS military spending would mean that you would both get a shit ton of taxes coming, no breaks for the rich, and a lot less military spending equals ton of surplus let alone any deficit. It is actually "easy" for USA to not only have a tax surplus but also pay all their debt and have money left over.
The money the US spends on the military is too much. I understand why they have to spend that much, but we have to ask ourselves if it's really worth it. From a certain point of view, it's worth it. If their military is not the best in the world they would be bullied, and might even get overthrown as the world's most dominant economy and military power and that would mean they would miss out on a lot of advantages that they enjoy and that would see their economy drop even faster than anybody imagined.
Still, the US spends too much on their military when there are other sectors that the money can be focused on.
According to
Statista the US spent $916 billion on their military in 2023. Thats ridiculous. That amount is 40% of the total amount spent by all the countries of the world on military in the same year.