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How Bad is the National Debt?
In this episode we answer some listener questions about the national debt! Namely:
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How big is it?
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How much does China/etc own and what does that mean?
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But seriously guys are we in trouble here?
Learn all of this and more on today’s episode!
Breaking Down the GOP Tax Bill, with Jon Schwabish of the Urban Institute
The GOP Tax Bill was marketed to supercharge growth, help the middle class, and boost worker pay. It’s sold both as a “tax cut” and as “tax reform.” Some people really liked it, some people really hated it, but most people don’t know much about it. Let’s find out!
Why Lower Corporate Tax Rates?
We’ve had a few readers ask why Congress wanted to lower corporate tax rates in the US. In particular, US corporations already have record-setting profits–why do they need more money? Should we, instead, be raising taxes on corporations? Indeed, plenty of articles make the case that the corporate tax cuts won’t create jobs at all.
The problem with these articles is that their counter-arguments are all arguing against the wrong argument. The logic behind a corporate tax cut is not in fact, “more corporate profits will mean more jobs.”
If that’s not the argument, what is?
What’s in the GOP Senators’ Tax Bill?
The Senate is working on their own version of a tax bill that would need to be reconciled with, or replace, the House is working on. We’re going to look at what’s in the Senate bill. We’ve seen a lot of oversimplification of this that seems to intentionally cherry-pick certain parts of it without looking at the whole picture.
So let’s dive in and figure out what’s going on.
Data Manipulation: How Much Does the US Spend on Defense?
On an unrelated errand we were looking up how much the US spends on its defense. We made the terrible mistake of just Googling it. But hey, that mistake turned into an insight we can share!
Turns out a lot of different people have very different ideas of how much the US spends on its defense as a percent of the Federal Budget. So let’s play a game.