Editorially, it might be good to point out that government money moves in both directions. I spent $X on interest payments on the national debt, but I also received $Y of those interest payments if I have any Treasuries in my portfolio. Similarly, I might be receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits.
Maybe expand this with a second section estimating what you're receiving from the government?
> Similarly, I might be receiving Social Security or Medicare benefits.
The demographic here is likely to be benefitting most from the mortgage interest deduction and 401k contribution "deduction" (it's deducted before pay is reported, but mathematically it's the same thing), FWIW. Younger folks are probably still paying well under market rate on their guaranteed student loans, and older FAANG scions are very much helped by the very low long term capital gains rate too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm at work, so just a few seconds to chime in: Educational spending is primarily sourced from the states. If you were to sum state spending on education, you would come up with another eye-watering pile of money. It's just that this money is usually sourced from property taxes and sales taxes and so doesn't show up on a "Here's how your income taxes were spent" analysis.
In fact, a lot of educational spending is local. I think something like 65% (maybe more) of my town's property taxes go to K-12 education with a decent chunk of the rest going to emergency services. There are various grants at the state and federal levels but it's mostly local.
It says I contributed money to Humanitarian assistance, but is that based on the budget or based on what was actually spent? Because there's been something of a recent Constitutional problem with budget money not actually being spent on its intended targets.
This is a really cool way to actually educate people about taxes and government spending.
It's crazy that our interest payments are so high. I remember when Clinton actually balanced the budget (no deficit), I was a teenager and couldn't care less. But I only a few years ago started to understand how much that sounds like Sci-Fi in this day and age.
>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).
You can't meaningfully calculate the budget including social security. This is a trust fund that you get back depending on how much you made and how long you live. And whether the outlays are taxed or not depends on your income at payment.
The whole site would be way more informative if social security was broken out.
Even better if it included how much you and your employer spend on health care, because most people are literally spending more because there is no universal health care.
The only thing useful in the whole thing is how much tax money goes to "defense"
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
Most of the money goes to Social Security, Medicare, and the military. I don’t currently benefit from the first two, but I will if I live long enough. (Reports of SS’s demise are exaggerated. The worst case when it runs out of money is that benefits are cut, not that it disappears entirely.) The benefit of the military is debatable but I would argue that there definitely is a benefit, although we spend a lot more than we really need to.
>Just like credit cards, the national debt has interest payments the government needs to pay.
Something I learned a few years ago: debt is to national debt what a chair is to an electric chair[1]. Government has to increase monetary base when economy grows. National debt is a good thing, where credit cards are just awful.
> Interest doesn't buy anything. It's the price of having spent money we didn't have.
And where does interest go? WHERE DOES INTEREST GO? <insert goose chase meme>
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
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?
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.)
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.
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.
Maybe expand this with a second section estimating what you're receiving from the government?
The demographic here is likely to be benefitting most from the mortgage interest deduction and 401k contribution "deduction" (it's deducted before pay is reported, but mathematically it's the same thing), FWIW. Younger folks are probably still paying well under market rate on their guaranteed student loans, and older FAANG scions are very much helped by the very low long term capital gains rate too.
I don’t think the website is lacking in describing things that we get from the government.
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.
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!
[1] https://wealth.ronnycoste.com/
It's crazy that our interest payments are so high. I remember when Clinton actually balanced the budget (no deficit), I was a teenager and couldn't care less. But I only a few years ago started to understand how much that sounds like Sci-Fi in this day and age.
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).
This is doing a lot of imaginary heavy lifting.
The whole site would be way more informative if social security was broken out.
Even better if it included how much you and your employer spend on health care, because most people are literally spending more because there is no universal health care.
The only thing useful in the whole thing is how much tax money goes to "defense"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Something I learned a few years ago: debt is to national debt what a chair is to an electric chair[1]. Government has to increase monetary base when economy grows. National debt is a good thing, where credit cards are just awful.
> Interest doesn't buy anything. It's the price of having spent money we didn't have.
And where does interest go? WHERE DOES INTEREST GO? <insert goose chase meme>
[1] or java to javascript :)
It’d be interesting to see how different political factions might rack and stack these line items in different ways.
transportation government operations natural resources community development education & social services agriculture international affairs science & space and energy
...anxiety rises.
It worked great on mobile
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.)
Does your mouse have a scroll wheel?
But my mouse's scroll wheel is not a swipey-thing.
You're talking a catastrophic level of pain and suffering if there's nothing to take its place.
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.
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.