How to eliminate the US debt

Author: Alec

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The US debt is out of control and neither party has done anything about it, despite their rhetoric.  How can we eliminate the US debt once and for all?
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@Alec
Why eliminate it when we have a high Moodys rating?
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@Greyparrot
Other countries only trust us for so long.  Unlike Greece, no one will bail us out.
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@Alec
So what. When our Moodys rating dips, then people will start to worry.
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@Greyparrot
We should prepare just in case countries don't trust us paying off our debt.  I already suspect the US won't pay it all off unless something is done about it.
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@Alec
I don't think you understand how this works.
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i would pass a balanced budget amendment of some kind and just keep the debt under control. the historical debt to GDP ratio is around 40%. that's a good number to shoot for. it's worked in the past, it can work now. 
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this quiz gives real world examples of how we can get the debt under control, or if we really wanted, get rid of it. 

i would propose cutting spending and raising taxes. alternatively, we could just keep growth of spending down to one or two percent, and eventually the economy would outpace the debt by a large margin. 
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@n8nrgmi
Address Illegal Immigration and the Undocumented Population (select one)

like wtf why can't we walk and chew gum?

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@n8nrgmi
Also no option for a flat tax. This isn't a serious worksheet for balancing the budget.

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@Alec
Enforce the corporate income tax, slash the welfare and military budgets. But be prepared for sharp contraction of GDP growth.
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@Greyparrot
the immigration debate has little to do with the national debt. 

a flat tax has little to do with the debt. and, a flat tax would be bad for the debt, if we kept spending high. that's because you'd have to lower taxes on the rich, and if we are going to get much of anything out of tax payers, taxes will have to go up on poorer people to get a similar stream of revenue. a flat tax is unjust and an all around terrible idea. 
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@Swagnarok
slashing medicare and medicaid and social security would cause us to have less to pay back to those programs, so that would help too. those are the biggest spending programs we got. not that i recommend this approach, but. 
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@Swagnarok
@Greyparrot
@Alec
@n8nrgmi
The answer's simple:

eAt ThE riCH
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@n8nrgmi
a flat tax has little to do with the debt. and, a flat tax would be bad for the debt, if we kept spending high. that's because you'd have to lower taxes on the rich, and if we are going to get much of anything out of tax payers, taxes will have to go up on poorer people to get a similar stream of revenue. a flat tax is unjust and an all around terrible idea. 

Just about everything you said here is either wrong or irrelevant to debt control. If you make flat excuses for government waste by throwing out the social justice card, then you've already conceded a reduction of the debt.

Most EU countries tax the poor, and there's no problem considering the poor use most of the services. 

The only way a flat tax would make the debt worse is if we didn't tax the people at the level of services the people want.

The tax exemption industry alone sucks about a trillion dollars a year out of the budget if you combine all the money spent on the IRS, tax preparers, lobbyists, and general government bribery and quid-pro-quos.

Flat tax fixes that.

Many of the States already tax the poor with state lotteries and sin taxes that hurt the poor who are addicted to gambling, booze, and cigarettes.
Nobody in those states (most of them are run by Democrats) complain about taxing the poor. Certainly not enough to repeal those taxes on the poor.
Gas taxes, toll taxes, registration fees, licensing, and many other things are also a tax on the poor as well since it's a larger part of their budget. Replacing these things with a flat tax would be a net benefit to all the poor, not just the ones that drive or have bad habits because the rich would be paying more for the same services.

Also, a level playing field will increase GDP and make competition fair as startup businesses don't have to do the pay-to play game trying to reduce their tax burden with crony exemptions. Larger businesses that cannot exploit political connections for tax exemptions will have to compete and lower their prices, which is good for all consumers.

If you are serious about getting the rich to pay their fair share instead of the century-old crony exemption game, you should be all in for a flat tax.
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@PressF4Respect
And they ate the Goose, but found no golden eggs inside.
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@Greyparrot
But at least the goose tasted delicious
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@Greyparrot
if you reduce the debt by cutting spending, to also make a flat tax doable, you didn't reduce the debt by creating a flat tax. you cut the debt by cutting spending. 

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@linate
Did you just skim over the part about reducing about a trillion dollars due to waste fraud and corruption from having a tax code that allows for exemptions due to a scaling tax rate?
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@Greyparrot
i read that americans spend around a hundred and fifty billion on tax preperation

i realize there's more to it than just tax prep if you are including fraud and such, but i think this gives us a rough idea about what we are dealing with. it's not much compared to the twenthy some trillion dollar debt. the fact remains that you are talking about something not too relevant 
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@Greyparrot
do you have any citations on your trillion dollar claim?
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@linate
Sure. It's done by people interested in actually getting the rich to pay a fair rate and not an inflated one that makes politicians look good while getting paid for exemptions so the rich don't actually have to pay their fair share.