In Boston, the subway often takes longer than the car. Of course, the above ground sections of the T can be outran on foot.

The thing about boomers is that this is their 4th or 5th apocalypse they have had to deal with, and none of them panned out. In the 60s it was nuclear war. In the 70s it was glaceraization (at the time, ice sheets were growing so fast they thought we would all be under ice by now). Then the ozone layer. The list goes…

Is it that they refuse or can’t afford it? I remember adding a few miles to one of the lines was going to cost over a billion dollars.

Oh Boston. Where they order new train cars and still owe money on the ones they bought 30 years ago.

The problem is cities in the US can’t seem to figure out how to do rail at a reasonable cost. It cost Boston a couple of billion dollars just to add a few miles of above ground rail to one end of their already existing network. The map you just showed, if done in rail, would cost over a trillion dollars in the US.

50% of the country doesn’t pay taxes already, in fact many get paid credits. The next 40% of earners, 50%-90%, account for 20% of the tax revenue, and the upper 10% of earners account for 80% of the tax revenue. This seems very similar to what you are proposing. 

1. Most countries don’t use tax programs to give people more money in a rebate then they paid in taxes, or even if they did not pay taxes they can still get a ‘rebate’, but the US does for many people.

I meant we spend more on medicine/scoial prgrams than China spends in total. All of their national budget.

I did realize this after it was too late. 

I still don’t get why you are saying it did not come from cbpp.org when I gave you the link multiple times. It was just easier to copy and paste from google than the website or I would have used the version on the website. It is not like it is the first time I have looked into this topic. Trying to explain to people…

Did you click the link? I googled: us budget social security medicare. This is one of the top images. When I click the image from the google search I get this website.

I’ll admit we get less out of it, but if you factor in the way the US tax system pays out, we are still near the top.

So, you think in other countries there is one tax that covers all of their social services? There are not separate programs in ther places?  

Do you not realize those making next to nothing get paid tax credits when they submit their taxes? They don’t have to pay any tax or have any withheld. It is not a refund in the traditional sense. I know people that get paid more in tax ‘refunds’ as they earn pre tax. The US uses this system to pay people in need, but…

There have been studies that take into account the tax portion of the goverrnment spending.

Works per capita too.

Except the US still spends more per capita. Your numbers don’t include tax programs that the US uses to pay low income families.

The link I provided in the last comment has the graphic, or a more recent version. It is from cbpp.org as you requested. Not sure what the problem is...

Not really. Only if you have never dealt with people that need government assistance. Most of the tax programs are designed to help the people that need it. I know people that get more money in refunds than they earn working, because they have so many dependents. Half of the country gets back more money than they put…

You have to look for total federal budget. Most people only cite discretionary spending, which is a small part of the pie.