[Request] How much money would this generate?

it’s impossible to know without knowing how much the weed would be taxed or what is considered “wealth.” That being said, cutting the military budget by 25% alone would allow $212,500,000,000 to be spent on other matters.

1. Legalizing and Taxing Marijuana
• In 2022, U.S. states with legal cannabis collected around $3 billion in tax revenue.
• If legalized federally, estimates suggest annual tax revenue could range from $10 billion to $18 billion.
2. Cutting the Military Budget by 25%
• The U.S. military budget for 2023 was around $858 billion.
• A 25% reduction would save $214.5 billion.
3. Implementing a 1% Wealth Tax
• The total net worth of U.S. billionaires is estimated at $5.5 trillion.
• A 1% wealth tax could generate $55 billion per year.
• Expanding it to the ultra-rich (e.g., those with $50M+ in assets) could bring in $100 billion+.
4. 10% VAT on Amazon, Walmart, and Facebook Profits
• Amazon: $33 billion net profit (2023) → $3.3 billion VAT
• Walmart: $13.7 billion net profit → $1.37 billion VAT
• Meta (Facebook): $39.1 billion net profit → $3.91 billion VAT
• Estimated total from these three: ~$8.6 billion.
• Expanding VAT to all large corporations could raise $100 billion+.

Total Estimated Annual Revenue:
• $10B–$18B (Cannabis Tax)
• $214.5B (Military Cut Savings)
• $55B–$100B+ (Wealth Tax)
• $8.6B–$100B+ (VAT on Corporations)

Grand Total Estimate:

$288 billion to $432 billion+ per year

We overspend by like 2 trillion every year under Biden about a trillion excluding pandemic (3.5) under Trump.

This is a start but would not fix the deficit. There are other things we could do. Like eliminate tax loopholes for a wealthy. Impose a proper tax on selling stocks. Impose a tax on borrowing money against stocks. Move from private insurance to universal healthcare

250 billion estimate for taxing capital gains at current income tax rates. (1.6 trillion in profits claimed 320 billion in capital gains tax collected)

Probably another 250 billion for taxing borrowing against stocks.

Big one is universal healthcare.

Switching to a single-payer universal healthcare system (like Medicare for All) would involve major cost shifts. While the government would spend more directly on healthcare, overall national health expenditures could decrease due to administrative savings, lower drug prices, and more bargaining power.

Step 1: Current U.S. Healthcare Spending
• Total U.S. Healthcare Spending (2022): $4.3 trillion (~$13,000 per person per year)
• Government’s Share of Healthcare Costs:
• Medicare & Medicaid: $1.6 trillion
• Veterans Affairs, CHIP, and other programs: $300 billion
• Federal subsidies for employer-provided insurance (tax breaks): $300 billion
• Total government spending on healthcare: ~ $2.2 trillion per year

Step 2: Estimated Costs of Universal Healthcare
• Projected cost of a Medicare for All plan: Estimates range from $2.5 trillion to $3.5 trillion per year, depending on coverage details.
• Projected Savings:
• Administrative costs: U.S. private insurance administrative costs are ~15-20%, while Medicare’s admin costs are ~2%. Savings: $200-$300 billion/year.
• Lower drug prices: Government bargaining power could reduce drug costs by $100-$200 billion/year.
• Lower hospital and provider costs: Centralized billing could save another $100-$200 billion/year.

Step 3: Net Government Savings
• Eliminating Private Insurance Costs: Businesses and individuals currently spend ~$1.2 trillion/year on premiums. If replaced with a tax-based system, these costs shift.
• Net savings estimate: Studies (e.g., from PERI, Lancet) estimate that universal healthcare could save $450 billion to $600 billion per year nationwide while covering everyone.
• Government Spending Impact: If a $3 trillion system replaces $2.2 trillion in existing spending, the government would need ~$800 billion more in taxes, but individuals and businesses would save far more than that in premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

Final Estimate:

A universal healthcare system could save the U.S. about $450B–$600B per year in total national spending, though the federal government would take on a bigger financial role.

These would make up the deficit and we would have a balanced budget easily. If we increased taxes on the rich a little more we could even pay down the deficit.

This is always so fucking dumb.

We absolutely should legalise weed, but a tax on it would raise trivial sums.

Cut the military budget by 25% and you’d make millions of people unemployed. That’s not money going on a rocket into the sun. Does that count as helping people? Especially now both Russia and China are looking likely to use any western weakness to literally wage imperial wars if conquest.

A 10% VAT on just a handful of companies would just fuck the incentives in the market. Amazon would suddenly be a facilitation and website software provider to a bunch of conveniently not Amazon companies, all aggregated into a website called shamazon.

Plus VAT isn’t a tax on the corporation, it’s a tax on consumers, and it’s a very regressive tax. VAT is one of the worst taxes economically for harming consumer buying power (aka making poor people poorer).

A 1% wealth tax would raise staggering sums of money, but would again have a big impact on the everyday folks. If it’s a 1% wealth tax over a certain level, eg a few million, it will raise far less and still create big distortions. I’m actually in favour of this, but let’s not pretend this isn’t politically and operationally difficult. A 10k a year tax on some old dear in a small house that just happens to be in a nice neighbourhood, which the media discovers is getting taxed more than the rich who can offshore their wealth isn’t a good look.

A VAT (Valued Added Tax) also known as GST, Goods and Services Tax, is not a tax on corporations, it is tax paid by consumers. If a business pays VAT on something it buys, or imports, it gets refunded the exact same amount, but in turn, it must add the tax to its invoices. The tax then rolls through the chain of transactions like a growing snowball (this is the “value added” bit), until it arrives at a participants who can’t claim anything back (consumers), who therefore end up paying the tax.

A VAT is also known as a Goods and Services tax, and should be charged on everything, movie tickets, hair cuts, food, that’s why it is a “good tax” (it doesn’t cause distortion by advantaging services over goods, and considering how much services dominate the modern advanced economy, this is one of its advantages). It is usually accompanied by reductions in other taxes, designed to compensate low income earners who now pay more tax (but such compensation measures are crude). In the US this could be higher tax credits, I guess. In Australia, state sales taxes and wholesale taxes and duties on many transactions were removed at the same time as the GST was introduced. So it’s a massive tax reform effort. With the number of workers declining in a aging population, GST relieves pressure on income tax to do all the work. It also avoids punishing goods vs intangible services. A tax only on physical goods is anti manufacturing.

But a VAT charged only on certain companies will be like a tariff, where the selected entities are treated like undesirable foreign countries. It would subsidise other companies. and consumers would change to other companies. It would harm profits and therefore tax at the companies concerned, but it would boost the profit and tax other non targeted companies. Any net tax gain would be a direct result of consumer price increases and it is clearly inflationary (one time, when it is launched, but the inflationary effects don’t come back). It’s worse than doing nothing. A selective VAT is both ignorant and a remarkably stupid idea and doesn’t say much for the expertise of the person who made these comments.

VATs are good taxes, but this guy has no clues. He probably means something like an extra sales tax.

Conversations about raising taxes before we can even figure out what it costs to run the government with even ALITTLE efficiency is insane to me.

* 25% of Military budget is only $200B, I think 50% can be cut, because our military spends more than all other countries combined.

* 1% wealth tax would generate another $200B-$300B

* 10% VAT is just more sales tax. It would hurt consumers.

Here’s what I would do:

* Start putting a 100% to 300% sales tax on all processed food, with highest on sugary drinks and deserts and lowest rate on processed food including fast food. That tax revenue would be provide universal healthcare premiums. A reduction in consumption will prevent diabetes and other health care scenarios reducing a burden on our system. Make food like fruits, vegetables, dairy, grains, beans etc. tax free too, so people can start cooking at home.

* Corporations need to slowing start paying more taxes than the current levels all the way up to 28%.

* Ban all investing in single family homes, if you don’t live in the home more than 9months a year, you pay very high property tax to prevent you from renting it. You can invest in multifamily / apartments etc.

* Reform the patent system. Reduce all healthcare/drug patent lifetimes from 20 years to 10.

This is a good start.

Actually it is possible to know. Check out what happened in Canada.

We got a bit of tax money but much of that was lost to trying to regulate the industry. Plus with so much control and regulation most people just stick to their old dealer so there wasn’t nearly the volume they estimated. Then a bunch of the companies went broke.

Overall in Canada it’s been a failure.

The funny thing is that the american government already spends like 15% of it’s expenditure on it’s weird fucked up healthcare system

it’s more then the military share btw !

I don’t imagine anyone in the world would shed a tear for richest few thousand people on the planet, but realistically 1% wealth tax would be really difficult to pay when your net worth is tied up in stocks in companies that don’t pay a dividend. Where would the cash actually come from? Would the banks loan out hundreds of billions of dollars every year for taxes?

In 2023,18%of the federal budget, or $1.101 trillion, went to welfare programs. This includes programs like Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

The problem is not govt collecting enough money. The problem is govt spending too much money. 33 Trillion in debt. Is that sustainable?

I’d love to pay a VAT style tax and have a country that supported its citizens with universal healthcare, paid paternity leave, free college and grad school, and fair pensions and vacation time. Whether I pay 4K on a sweater or 4.2k on a sweater. The difference is meaningless to me and I’d like to contribute to shared quality of life increases.

I’d also like stronger border protection and a discussion about the importance of assimilation to immigration.

Not enough

The problem is the spending has gotten so out of control that even simple things like that wouldn’t touch what we’re doing.

The only way you’re in making over that matters is by cutting the entire government by at least one percent a year over the next ten years.

My biggest problem with this posting here on Reddit is that *Twitter-length messages are Twitter-length message shit*. It’s a complex topic and the very media environment of tiny little solutions to massively complex problems is the root of why were are where we are in 2025.

“It means misleading information–misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information–information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that **when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result.”** ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985

Helping people means people living longer, meaning more overpopulation. Can’t have that. Not enough resources, down the line. Slowly being killed off for a “better” future. B.G. Approves

Entirely depends. Especially because when it comes to taxes. The government can only say how hard the hammer falls. They don’t get to say where it lands.

An example. Let’s say that Jeff and Elon, the two richest men on the planet, get taxed at 25% of their net wealth. Instead of going off taxable income like everyone else. They could just as easily flip the script and now it’s the Amazon and Tesla employees paying that tax, or us customers paying that tax.

I live in a place where they legalized weed and taxed it and they we have a few massive multimillion dollar recreation centers and a bunch of other critical projects that actually give back to the community to thank for it.

It’s amazing what tax money can do when it’s actually invested into the communities people live in. If this isn’t happening in your community you are getting robbed.

A VAT would not work for any retailers like Amazon. A VAT is literally a value-added tax… To be subject to it, you would have to add economic value to a product. Retailers do not do that. Only manufacturing does this. A tax on the price of something that’s merely sold by a retailer would be a de facto sales tax.

Fun fact: in the aftermath of WW2 the top marginal tax rate was 90%

NINETY

and yet, we still had millionaires. Even a billionaire. We had publicly funded services. We had decent wages.

Yes, on social issues we were fucking terrible, but those are a completely seperate issue. Despite what some would have you believe, treating fellow human beings with respect, dignity, and an automatic assumption that they mean well, does not kill the economy.

Living standards have been falling steadily since the 80’s.

Wealth inequality has soared.

That is the biggest problem.

Everything else will never get better until that does.

1% wealth tax. More. Much, much more. 

Tax large for profit religious organizations also. Flat tax of 12% for everyone, including corporations, no loop holes…would generate way more money btw.

A 4% wealth tax on income on net assets over 125k excluding retirement accounts would at a minimum replace income tax and balance the budget.

This would do a lot.

It’s a simplistic proposal. What does a wealth tax look like? If you found a public corporation, and the shares constitute a significant fraction of your wealth, are you obliged to sell 1% of your shares a year to pay the tax? What’s the economic impact of that going to be?

Only 25% is not enough. Our defense budget is like a trillion dollars, there is no damn way that we can’t just cut that down to a 100 billion and throw the rest of the money into social services and infrastructure. The government already uses a lot of that money to illegally spy on its citizens. The quality of life and safety of the average American citizen would not even be affected by gutting the military spending budget. When the pentagon starts passing audits, then maybe we can give them a SMALL raise, but until then they need to get their funding gutted.

I would just say if you make over 100 million you get a 10% tax on everything including shocks and other billion bullshit workaround if your buying stock you have to pay the tax or else the government is legally allowed to take your stocks and sell them, your no longer allows to claim tax writeoffs if you make over 100 million and yes we should put like a flat tax on everyone over 500 million that’s like 50% OR something like in the older days when taxes were 99% after 200k