The United States is the richest nation that the world has ever known, along with it also correspondingly having the largest Federal budget of any nation in the world. Yet, within a construct in which individuals are responsible for paying their bills and taxes, and therefore of being individually fiscally responsible or thereby duly suffering the consequences, so of –- the very government that they are a part of, has consistently in the 21st century, been fiscally irresponsible, by persistently running massive fiscal deficits, year-after-year.
There does come a time when the piper must be paid, for all of that federal debt so accumulated; yet, America seems to believe that they alone, out of any nation in the history of this world, need not be subject to that very law. However, those then, that comprehend that the stability of the nation's currency is vital to its future success, know that America does need to get its house in order, and that further, it has the capability to do so even at the present time.
There are two basic ways to balance a budget and/or to create a surplus, of which one of those ways is to reduce governmental expenditures and the other is to increase tax revenues, or to do both, simultaneously. When it comes to tax revenues, by far, the biggest flaw of America's current tax policies is their inability to collect a meaningful amount of taxation from those that have the lion's share of the nation's wealth. For instance, we read at cnbc.com that, ''The wealthiest 1% of Americans controlled about $41.52 trillion.“ Also, as noted by Bernie Sanders,“In 1952, the corporate income tax accounted for 33 percent of all federal tax revenue. Today, despite record-breaking profits, corporate taxes bring in less than 9 percent.“
One of those things, that most Americans, can't seem to readily comprehend is just how much profit, American corporations are capable of, in which, a prime example would be the absolute gargantuan amount of profit that Apple generated in 2021, which was $94.7 billion in net income; and that was just in one fiscal year! So then, because this government has not appropriately taxed the wealth of the superrich, including not deliberately targeting and subsequently taxing at a meaningful level the megaprofits of these superrich megacorporations that have consistently generated billions upon billions in profit, on a yearly basis, then there just isn't any real way that the Federal budget will be balanced or will display a surplus anytime soon, because when the entities that have all the money are lightly taxed, that shortfall, is not going to be made up, elsewhere.
Of course, there are few people or corporations, for that matter, that really like to pay taxes, which is the probable reason why superrich people and corporations, have quite obviously “gamed“ the system so that they pay the minimal amount of taxation that they can pay, thereby allowing them to have even more power and influence then they already have. Clearly, our present day government is either heavily influenced by these superrich players or it has been effectively co-opted by them.
This thus signifies that the prevailing winds will not change for governmental fiscal responsibility, until there comes that time, if ever, when those with all the money are deliberately targeted and subsequently aptly taxed by that government of, for, and by the people.