Discussion

Tax Wrapped

cr125rider: This is awesome!It worked great on mobile

ssl-3: It got stuck on desktop.It worked fine until it got to the point where it showed me how many tax dollars I contributed in 2025, and had a little popup fade in (and disappear again) that said "Swipe to continue"That was the end of the road for me. It was impossible to proceed further.(These UI non-elements can all go die in a fire together.)

jjulius: >It was impossible to proceed further.Does your mouse have a scroll wheel?

ssl-3: It does.But my mouse's scroll wheel is not a swipey-thing.

wrs: [delayed]

jjulius: But at least it moves things from "impossible" to "possible"! :)

DeltaCoast: Very cool! But I think there’s a cap on social security, it said I paid much more towards that than I did.

clayhacks: There definitely is a cap. I believe once you make more than $176k you stop being taxed for that

connicpu: Yep the cap was $176,100 for 2025

ncr100: I wonder what the various billionaires pay in federal tax.I know there's not just one type of billionaire, but many, And I wonder if any are more or less significant than each other to the Nations financial Health.

voidfunc: We need to kill of social security. Its an absolute black hole of money and I will never see back anywhere close to the amount I paid in.

onelesd: we need to kill off fire departments. my house has never burned down and i will never get my money's worth.

ssl-3: It's possible that I will never try visiting that website again. ;)

voidfunc: This is a strawman. Look up how utterly fucked social security is and tell me with a straight face it is a good system and you'll get value from it.

wat10000: The most fucked thing about SS is that the tax is capped. Somebody struggling on a minimum wage job is paying the full rate, while I get to stop paying partway through the year. Remove the cap and it starts to look quite a bit healthier.

Rohinator: Love this - hoping this goes viral and people actually start talking about the deficit

welldoneator: I _really_ enjoyed this and love the concept! Scrolling on desktop was a little odd, but worked really well otherwise.Content wise it's pretty eye opening just how much of our tax dollars go to things like social security, medicare and interest. Seeing it laid out in the exact dollar amount affecting me is pretty powerful stuff. I wonder how much voting habits would change if this was a common way to communicate the cost of federal programs. I had moments where I was thinking "why are we not spending more on education!" as a result as well.Awesome work!

Cider9986: Another cool site somewhat similar to this is Wealth, shown to scale[1][1] https://wealth.ronnycoste.com/

Steve6: This is amazing and depressing. Most people will never get any benefit from this spending, definitely not of equal value to what you contributed/lost/spent. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum you should be disappointed by the federal governments reckless spending. Yet it never gets better. Likely never will.I see other people recommending taxes that are missed, but with people being taxed from every angle it's impossible to accurately measure tax burden. That's by design."In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."But... Even death does not save you from taxes.

woodruffw: The visualization shows that, at many income brackets, the majority of one's taxes go squarely into the social safety net. You can make an intelligible argument about waste, etc., but to say that Americans don't benefit from social security, medicaid, etc. seems facially incorrect.

Steve6: Even if you ignore ALL other tax spending (which is a huge ask) the best possible outcome is $1 in = $1 out. That breaks even at best. The government isn't creating value it's just moving money around.Now add in other wasteful spending. Add in inefficiencies. Add in the deficit. Add in inflation and money printing. Add changing administrations with their own goals. Add wars and other foreign affairs. Add in spying on citizens. Add in back door deals with giant corporations and insider trading.Saying "If you ignore all the bad parts, the government is beneficial" is not a strong argument.There are SOME people who benefit from the social safety net. But as a whole it's largely a drain on everyone else.

mkhalil: So we spent more on interest for the deficit than we spent on the doubling the combined spending on all of the following:transportation government operations natural resources community development education & social services agriculture international affairs science & space and energy...anxiety rises.

c0balt: Not really. That is federal spending, right? So your local transport authority or most of the funding of a local schopl, for example, wouldn't be included here?

chungy: I didn't consider that it meant to use the scroll wheel and likewise closed the page before discovering that.

triceratops: Social security is fucked because it invests only in treasuries. And it has an income cap.

someguydave: The federal government has become a machine to transfer the income of working people to boomers

Evidlo: How much goes to retirees vs low income people?

someguydave: it goes to everyone (in varying amounts) who paid payroll tax when they turn 65. They get free health insurance too (Medicare).poor people getting Medicaid are like 20% of the population of most states.essentially we are promising everyone who turns 65 to get ~$800k in benefits, and this is simply not affordable.

vscode-rest: Should Income Security for Vets count as income security? And Healthcare for Vets, healthcare?

wyre: You exist in a bubble if you think a meaningful population of the target audience of this app have any meaningful amount of treasuries in their portfolio, or any portfolio at all.I don’t think the website is lacking in describing things that we get from the government.

ajross: Uh... do you have cash in a money market account? What do you think the "money market" is, exactly?

xphos: In the nicest way possible no absolutely not that would way underperform just about everything

ajross: Not over the last few months, obviously. But in general I've never known a serious trader who didn't maintain a cash balance at some non-trivial level, if only to maintain liquidity for low-latency bets.But regardless, the point was that all the "cash" you see in your investment accounts (even if you, personally, don't carry any) is predominantly treasuries and other short term high-confidence debt. Everyone owns treasuries, it's only true that very few people "buy" treasury notes.

wyre: No, my point was that not everyone has an investment account, period.

ajross: Well, your statement was that a "meaningful population of the target audience" did not "have any meaningful amount of treasuries in their portfolio". And that's wrong. Basically everyone holds treasuries. Some people don't. Most people do.

wyre: Look it up. Half of Americans don’t own stock or investment. By any definition that is considered a “meaningful population”.

krackers: >See what the federal government spent with your tax dollars.Is thinking of it in this sense actually accurate? I always assumed since every government has embraced MMT they can spend whatever they want simply by printing it out of thin air. Then taxation could be understood as the only crude knob to "destroy money", and also has the effect of forcing USD to be the primary national currency (e.g. owning bitcoin won't do you any good if you ultimately need to pay taxes in USD).

unmole: > since every government has embraced MMTThis is doing a lot of imaginary heavy lifting.

woodruffw: That's not really how taxes work. Some of your mine (and mine) is essentially front-loaded into today's social safety net, ensuring that the poor, infirm, etc. are afforded certain minimums in terms of quality of life.The $1 I put into that doesn't "come back" to me in cash; I get it in the form of a society that has fewer people going hungry, dying from treatable conditions, etc. This is where the argument around efficiency, waste, etc. can be made, but waxing about inflation, etc. has essentially nothing to do with the matter.

Steve6: The original post is about ALL federal spending (funded by taxes). Not just the social safety net. You can't hand wave the bad stuff away. If you want to argue that "fewer people going hungry, [and] dying from treatable conditions" is good, that's fine. I agree. But you can't ignore "inflation, etc." that are caused by the same federal government and wars funded by the same taxes. Saying it "has essentially nothing to do with the matter" is simply not true. It's all related.

fhdkweig: > Even if you ignore ALL other tax spending (which is a huge ask) the best possible outcome is $1 in = $1 out. That breaks even at best. The government isn't creating value it's just moving money around.It is possible to spend money that gets more money back later. Think of investing in infrastructure that creates more economic activity. Imagine how much better the economy grew once we connected the transcontinental railroads and electrified towns. These were huge projects that no one could have funded on their own, but with coordination with all the money from everyone else. I can't think of any other way to coordinate that much money without getting taxes involved.

Steve6: I understand. And I get it. I also want the best infrastructure and economy possible. The theory is getting taxes and master planning a big project will eventually pay off more than it costs. But you have to remember, when taxes are involved you're really talking about how to spend other people's money. I would argue that the best way to help people is simply to not tax them and let them spend on the things they value the most.The same argument you're making is commonly used to build tax subsidized sports stadiums. I'm curious if you agree with that as a valid use for local taxes.In my previous message I mentioned "back door deals with giant corporations and insider trading" as a bad thing. Well, the bigger the master planned project is, the more incentive there is for shenanigans.

craftkiller: My top category was social security, followed by medicare. If I live long enough, I'll benefit from both of these. But regardless, these are great things to put our money towards. I'd much rather lose a couple tens of thousands per year than have our elderly dying homeless and hungry.The next category was military which I think we can all agree that US spends too much on the military but it would be silly to claim that I don't benefit from the pax americana.The next category was interest on debt... Which yeah... not stoked about that.

Steve6: Everyone will have those as their top 4. ;)I agree that helping the elderly, homeless, and hungry is good. Everyone does. The question is: Is the government making a better use of that money than you would? I believe the answer is a strong "NO". You do not get to keep the good and ignore the bad.Lastly if you've ever walked around any major US city you'll see plenty of elderly, homeless, and hungry folk. So I'm not convinced any money going towards that goal has helped much. Haha

rl3: Sure, but what replaces it?You're talking a catastrophic level of pain and suffering if there's nothing to take its place.

rainsil: Australia simply forces people to save a portion of their income into investable retirement accounts. Because the money goes towards productive investment rather than funding what is essentially a government-run Ponzi scheme, retirees on Superannuation live much better than Americans that rely on Social Security. There is a small Age Pension for those who don’t have enough Superannuation income for whatever reason.In principle the US could phase such a system in by redirecting future Social Security payroll taxes to 401(k)s while maintaining existing commitments. But because Social Security is so deeply underfunded, workers would need to keep up solidarity payments for decades without any expectation of reciprocity once they retire.Still, everyone would be better off in the long run.

huhkerrf: It's 62%: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...At what point does that tip to "meaningful population" for you?

y0eswddl: lmao, I love the irony of this "how much could one banana cost" reply

silexia: It would be interesting to see the massive amounts that go to fraud and waste.