That and danans 'one thing' seems rather simplistic / reductive. My view is the degradation of the US has been many things over a long time and we're lucky things lasted as long as they have been.
It really is mostly that, plus the wars. The first round of cuts came at about the same time we started the wars, LOL. The political line was that the tax cuts and (some fucking how) the wars would "pay for themselves" but the CBO was like "um, no, here is approximately how many trillions this will add to the debt" and gee, the latter turned out to be way, way closer to correct.
Now, of course, we also have the interest on all that new debt to worry about.
[EDIT] To be clear, the Democrats are also to blame for carrying on with the tax cuts, sometimes actively, when they had opportunities to end them.
No it is not. It was possible when economy was growing like > 10% for decades. As soon as that stopped people will look for cuts and tax cuts is just obvious place.
The problem is that real wages for the average person has been going down since the 1970s. Meanwhile, the wealthiest people are making more and more, but that extra money is not going to Social Security due to the cap. Additionally, due to longer lifespans and fewer children, the ratio of working to retired people went up. Productivity is also up, which can easily compensate for the change in workforce, but isn't enough to cover both that and the shift in income to fewer, wealthier people whose contributions are capped.
The net effect is less money going to Social Security. The easy solution is to remove the cap. That's unfair for the wealthy, but is a lot easier than getting fairer and more equitable wages across the entire economy.
> The problem is that real wages for the average person has been going down since the 1970s.
This was true, but the COVID period has actually changed that. Real wages are now up for the median wage earner, and for the median hourly earner. Not by a lot, but they are no longer declining as they were in the period from about 1978-2021.
Ah a simple appeal to 'what is fair' - ok now how shall that fairness be manifested? With a drum circle? It's an oligarchical system and you want the people to wrestle power out of the oligarchs hands? Through voting? Have you met people? And if it was so simple why wait until now to do it - clearly there have been some complications.
You see this a lot in nature, parasites evolve faster than their hosts, that's why they're still around.
> That and danans 'one thing' seems rather simplistic / reductive
OK. Let's add some things. Free public schools, subsidized public universities, subsidized public vocational colleges, Medicare. All can be funded if we reverse the tens of trillions of wealth that we have channeled upwards with tax cuts for the wealthy and cut taxes for the working class.
It is clear from your comments here that you're a very cynical person when it comes to national government. Perhaps that is blinding you to the fairly well-known fact that during the period most extolled by conservatives as the golden age of American history (*), upper marginal rates were in the 70-92% range, without much disagreement except for a few people who leveraged their wealth into (Reagan's) political power. Most people didn't see anything wrong with those rates back then, and most surveys even today show Americans in very large numbers in favor of a much more egalitarian distribution of wealth than exists (they also think it is much more egalitarian than it actually is).
(*) yes, ok, so in reality some of them want to go back to 1890 or even earlier, but I'm trying to focus on a more mainstream conservative attitude.
There are governments I do like, it is possible to govern well. I just think it's facile to work under the assumption that the answer is simple. That one simple change will take the US from point A to B. The US has radically changed from the 1950s and the idea that one simple change of a 92% top marginal tax rate will make it economically the 1950s again is completely preposterous.
