Pet Peeve

[rowyn]

Reporting on the US federal gov't's deficit always talks about the raw numbers: ($1.35 trillion!) Sometimes it mentions percentage of GDP (9.2%!)

It hardly ever talks about government income.

I get the feeling that government income generally goes up and down in a way that has very little to do with raising or lowering taxes, and a great deal to do with whether or not the economy is booming. But I don't really know, because 'how much money does the government receive?' isn't a question reporters are interested in answering. v.v Maybe I'll dig through the CBO's website and see if they can tell me.

Comments

[xthread.livejournal.com]

I get the feeling that government income generally goes up and down in a way that has very little to do with raising or lowering taxes, and a great deal to do with whether or not the economy is booming

Very much so, modulo some delays because some income sources are counter-cyclical, and some are decoupled (eg, Estate Taxes). But if your tax system is strongly tied to income (personal or business, it doesn't matter), then government income is going to look like a magnified graph of underlying economic activity, and if the tax system isn't strongly tied to income, then it's going to make the bad times hurt even worse.

[rowyn]

And US federal gov't revenue is *definitely* tied to income. It's something like 50% income tax, 40% social security/medicare/medicaid, and 10% everything else.