Hacker News Reader

Comment by Figs | Hacker News Reader

If this continues for much longer, local/state governments can, should, and eventually will commandeer the taxes that currently go to the federal government. There is no point in paying federal tax if the federal government is no longer functional. States are already trying to step up with emergency declarations to enable financial support to work around SNAP being unfunded; passing state laws to redirect useless federal taxes to fund state food programs in order to prevent the alternative of immediate violent revolution as millions of people go hungry is an obvious course of action when they exhaust that capacity...

View on HN

Sadly I don't think it works this way, at least IIUC -- the state can't withhold taxes from the federal government, because those taxes (from biweekly paychecks anyway) don't go through the states -- they go directly to the federal government. Some states are trying to pass laws to still make headway in this area, for reasons like you suggest, for example NY:

https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2025/10/state-lawmaker...

(it's a really interesting situation since I think I read somewhere that the reason federal income taxes are directly remitted to the federal government today, is specifically to disallow this kind of state retaliation)

Although, Republicans would ostensibly like to shrink the size of the government and Democrats would probably at this point prefer their money to go to an entity that will actually provide services. So I don’t really see why there isn’t a broad consensus for implementing this idea.

Because Republicans don't want to shrink the size of government as a whole, rather they want most funding to go to a massive domestic paramilitary terror squad to keep citizens in line.

>Although, Republicans would ostensibly like to shrink the size of the government

Where did you get that idea? That's never been true. You may just have been hoodwinked by their "Two Santas" strategy.

Republicans have been explicitly playing that game as promoted by Jude Wanninski[1] since the late 1970s, and it's been loudly touted as quite successful by Republicans.

The idea is to cut taxes and spend like drunken sailors when Republicans are in power, then cry poverty and austerity when Democrats are in power, loudly calling for incredibly popular Democratic programs to be slashed.

I'm not making this up. See the links below. It's not like this has been a secret for the past fifty years or anything.

[0] https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/featured/two-santas-str...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jude_Wanniski

And this will work much better in most blue states than most red states, which are more dependent on federal funds. Which means the likely response is the federal government will begin funding what were formerly federal programs in select states.

I'm sorry, can you clarify that last part?

The federal government will begin funding what were formerly federal programs...?

I am saying one likely outcome is a federal government that explicitly and openly funds social programs that were formerly available to everyone only in states where it has a political majority.

They will begin because they have presently stopped, and because it places additional taxation burden on blue states if they first allow the states to try to pick up their own slack, because generally only the blue states (Texas being the major possible exception) will be able to do so.

This results in the federal government taking care of their base and their opposition subsidizing this support for their base.

Gotcha, thank you; that's much clearer!

Is the Air Force still being paid? We've seen a complete willingness to have the military turned against the people and the tech gap between us citizens and the fully equipped military is staggering. A couple drone swarms and even hungry folks will have to take permanent cover and that's just the stuff declassified. It's an interesting time where a very small number of folks can effectively hold off the entire citizenry for long enough that the "millions of people go hungry" problem solves itself. Pick which regions get food first and you wont even have to bother with things like gerrymandering anymore.

Not the Air Force but forces in direct control of the president like ICE/Secret Service are being paid in advance to ensure their continued service https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/1978925656785457247

Reply on news.ycombinator.com