alt Hacker NewsI wonder if this got solved anywhere yet: how do you get politicians that actually want to save money instead of raising taxes or creating new types of taxes?
I understand that it’s way easier and quicker to do the latter instead of saving.
That’s the reason they do it in the first place.
I just wonder if there is a way to incentivize them to save instead. Maybe some country was successful at one point in time.
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>I wonder if this got solved anywhere yet: how do you get politicians that actually want to save money instead of raising taxes or creating new types of taxes?
???
"I'll lower/won't raise your taxes" is politics 101. The bigger issue is how you prevent politicians from promising goodies and/or lower taxes, funding them both by borrowing.
The easiest place to save is in entitlements. Saving there is unfortunately a really good way to avoid reelection. If you want to save money, get a better demography. That's impossible, but not more impossible than cutting benefits.
Yes but you're not going to like the solution.
Basically make a pledge to never raise taxes. It was called norquist pledge. Signers promise to oppose any and all efforts to increase marginal income tax rates for individuals and businesses.
Questionable whether this actually constrained spending. Ideally would be paired w balance budget amendment
We could return to a sound money system, which is what the US had before 1914. (The Federal Reserve Act in 1914 switched us to a fiat money system.)
> Maybe some country was successful at one point in time.
It worked for France after the invention of the guillotine.
> how do you get politicians that actually want to save money
What makes you think that they don't save money? looking at the state of public services and infrastructures (at least in my country), I can see how we don't spend as much as we should, which I suppose qualifies as saving. Budgets for education, justice, police, healthcare often decrease too. Also seeing how many billionaires we have, it's also obvious to me that we actually need more tax, not less.
In France they don't exist.
Under Clinton the "PAYGO" rules enforced that all spending had to be covered by cuts or new taxes. This caused a lot of aggressive review and limited eagerness to spend.
The problem is they tax and save upon the wrong people which leads to wealthy transfer to the upper 1% which leads to economic problems. They try to fix that by taxing and saving upon the wrong people even more.
Warren Buffett, I believe, suggested passing a law making every sitting member of Congress ineligible for reelection whenever the federal deficit exceeds 3%
I suspect he suggested 3% because of the yearly GDP growth at the time, but I say make it 0%. Politicians shouldn't have the authority of indebting future generations.