tldr - the reason that going after the poor is always the answer is that it's the rich who are both asking and answering the question.
The wealthy boomers who own multi-million dollar California track homes and don’t pay taxes because of prop 13, who are consuming millions on quasi-necessary medical procedures because they partied too hard in the 70s, gorged on trans fats in the 80s, smoked drank and didn’t go for walks, that’s where entitlement reform should start. But those are the base of one, maybe both parties and will vote out anyone that refuses to subsidize their ozempic and knee surgeries. They will even vote to reduce democracy by gerrymandering the state to block third party candidates and ensure nobody can come for their unnecessary health care costs and other ballooning entitlements.
Most corporations don't make extraordinary profits. They make enough to stay in business, and if you tax them too heavily they will either raise prices or just close. So higher corporate taxes will ultimately depress business and be paid for by the consumer.
A few corporations certainly do make a lot of profit, and various "windfall profit" or "excess profit" taxes have been tried, but that's more about politicians trying to earn favor than anything that makes a practical difference.
Spending is the thing that's out of control, so that's where the problem must be attacked.
Corporate taxes are levied on profit, not revenue. Raising corporate taxes would not cause any businesses to fail. And businesses can only raise prices if the market will bear those higher prices. Prices are set based on what customers will pay, not on what profit margin the company wants.
It is a little more nuanced than that. Raising corporate taxes can make it harder for businesses to succeed if it sharply reduces after-tax profits or discourages investment. OTOH, if done well, the incremental tax revenue can create a healthier business environment overall.
Taco bell seems ridiculous but the alternative is that they eat cat food.
Yes, the rich would whine about it and raise a fuss, but ultimately their lives would not actually change for the worse.
Whereas taking away SNAP and other entitlements would demonstrably make the lives of millions of people significantly worse.
Even SNAP only cost 100 billion last year, and its net effect on revenue was probably positive, though these things are hard to measure in isolation: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/snap-food-assistance-is-a-sound-in...
(Because humans are bad at large numbers: 100 billion / 38 trillion is 0.2%, or alternatively 38T represents 380 years of SNAP at 2024 levels.)
Letting 70M+ Americans, many of which are children, go hungry is good for the country because it saves money. And if they don't die from malnutrition, don't worry, we're going to save even more by cutting their health coverage, and eventually social security, a program that people paid into their entire lives.
Take a step back...do you believe these 70M+ people are just lazy, inept, ...? Do they deserve to suffer, especially the children? What are we buying with their suffering? A reduction in spending? A tax break for the wealthy? Is this the only solution?
What if we were to create a real national healthcare system which cared for everyone at a vastly lower cost? That would also save money AND reduce suffering. Seems like a net win.
But that won't get us all the way there, so what else can we do? Everyone knows the answer, increase taxes on the wealthy. Top marginal tax rate used to be 90% (1950-1964), so perhaps there's some wiggle room between that and today's 37%.
Historical Tax rates: https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2012/12/1.png
This country needs a big old heaping of empathy and compassion.
I'll agree that eliminating SNAP is an extreme measure that in the overall picture saves little (unlike modest cuts to SS and Medicare) but consider that 20% of Americans are to some measure dependent on SNAP. There's something wrong with that in my view.
but what interpretation leads to "therefore SNAP is the problem" ? compared to land management or anti-trust, etc
as a policy alternative, we could say, ban the exports of alfalfa until the SNAP usage is 5%, and split up cisco into 2000 different food distribution companies.
funding for social spending i think is a very strong chesterton's fence, in that the program was introduced to mitigate a problem. getting rid of the mitigation isnt going to get rid of the underlying problem
One day we'll look back and wish we had the self-control to both impose austerity measures to get the spending under control and the foresight to spend wisely on long term functions like infrastructure.
Until then it's business as usual from both political parties.
Letting people starve is a better solution than letting them drink soda and potentially develop diabetes over the long term? Preposterous. I don't understand why the common sentiment is that everyone who uses SNAP must enter into a contract with the state to lose weight and only eat heads of iceberg lettuce, lest they be labeled leeches.
But such regulations are easily subverted and ultimately may not make a lot of difference. If people want to live on Dr. Pepper and cigarettes they will find a way to do that.
people shouldnt be prevented from ever drinking doctor pepper because they are poor.
snap should reclaim their money from dr pepper if peopleare spending too much on it, or they should be pushed on making doctor pepper healthier if thats what people are spending snap money on.
How different would the world have been if either of the two "grand bargins" that Boehner started, and then Obama torpedo'd last minute (in the first example) or the second one (which biden as VP torpedo'd) happened? No rise of the tea party, working bipartisan arrangement on spending?
Shit matters.