Ten Myths About the U.S. Tax System

In Washington, D.C., there is a set of people who move into town when their party comes to power, and who eventually leave once their party is voted out. These are the high-profile residents of D.C., the ones who make headlines. But for every one of these people, there are thousands more that you rarely hear about, or hear from. This is the other Washington, D.C. These people work behind the scenes on all sorts of important matters like U.S. tax policy, or the runaway national debt. Our guest today is a specialist in both those matters.

Jessica RIEDL: My nonpartisan approach is to be critical of everybody in Washington.

Stephen DUBNER: Do you have any friends? 

RIEDL: No. Not really. Much of my policy has been sharing uncomfortable truths, and frankly, angering people. 

DUBNER: So do you see yourself as someone who’s sounding the alarm? 

RIEDL: Absolutely. I’ve been sounding the alarm since 2001. 

DUBNER: How’s that working out? 

RIEDL: As you can see from the debt, my career has been an abject failure. 

This friendless soul is Jessica Riedl:

RIEDL: I’m a senior fellow in budget, tax, and economic policy at the Manhattan Institute.

Despite her claim to failure, Riedl is consistently named by Washingtonian magazine as one of the most influential economic-policy professionals in D.C. She has testified before Congress, she routinely briefs lawmakers in both political parties. And she has two messages. Number one: the federal debt crisis is even worse than you think and few politicians have the courage to do anything about it. And number two: just about everything you know about U.S. tax policy is wrong. Today, on Freakonomics Radio: federal debt and tax myths — could we possibly be having any more fun?

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In December, a month after Donald Trump was elected to his second term, but before he’d taken office, Jessica Riedl published a few articles that made me think she’d be a good person to speak with, and to learn from. First came her piece in City Journal, which is published by the Manhattan Institute; it was called “Correcting the Top 10 Tax Myths.” Then came a pair of op-eds in the Boston Globe; one was called “What Conservatives Get Wrong About Taxes”; the other, “What Liberals Get Wrong About Taxes.” I started our conversation by asking for some background on her employer, the Manhattan Institute.

RIEDL: It’s a right-of-center think tank headquartered in Manhattan, although they have research fellows all over the country. 

DUBNER: It’s interesting to admit that something is a right-of-center think tank, or a left-of-center think tank, because I find that so many institutes — there are a bunch on the right, there a bunch on the left — nearly all of them talk about how they aim to be nonpartisan. I just about never buy it. So can you give us a quick buyer’s guide to assess the research coming out of institutes like yours? 

RIEDL: Generally the research fellows here are more supportive of free markets, lower taxes, free trade. But ultimately the research fellows are free to publish what they want. We don’t get dictated by our bosses, but they do tend to attract people at this organization who are a little more free-market oriented. 

DUBNER: Let’s talk a little bit more about you. How and when did you become interested in tax policy and budget policy? I’ve read about some U.S. News and World Report challenge to readers to balance the budget that got you enthusiastic. Is that true?

RIEDL: Yes. Wow, you’ve done your homework. I was a high school debater my senior year. U.S. News came out with a cover story that said, “So you think you can balance the budget?” You open up to this set of spreadsheets of the federal budget, and they make a game out of it. I just rolled up my sleeves, given the nerd I am, and went, this is going to be fun. The thing I like about budget policy, beyond the fact that it’s really important, is that when you study taxes and spending, you really get into the philosophical questions of what is the role of government. What do we want government to focus on? How big should it be? You’re really at the center of all Washington policy debate. It has, therefore, a holistic, philosophical side of it beyond just the economic nerdery. I’ve grown more focused on it the more I studied it, because I realized, oh my gosh, we’re in deep trouble. One scary way of looking at it is that a year and a half ago, economists at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, tried to project out the economy over the next 30 years under current deficit projections. The model crashed. They could not project a functioning U.S. economy under current debt trends. That should scare everybody. 

DUBNER: Okay, consider all of us scared. Let’s go back for a minute. I’d like to hear about your experience staffing and advising political candidates and elected officials.

RIEDL: I’ve been in Washington for a quarter of a century. For the first 10 years, I worked at the Heritage Foundation, running their budget policy shop. Then I moved over to the U.S. Senate, where I spent six years as chief economist to Senator Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio. And for eight years to the day I have been at the Manhattan Institute. In addition to these jobs, I’ve worked on several presidential campaigns. I was director of tax and spending policy for Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential race, and in 2012, I was the lead architect of Mitt Romney’s 10-year deficit reduction plan.

DUBNER: Did you ever think about running for office?

RIEDL: I did. I grew up in Wisconsin. I was an adviser to Governor Tommy Thompson when I was in college. But ultimately I didn’t run for office for the two reasons that, number one, I didn’t want to have to ask people for money. Number two, I’m too stubborn. I’m the last person who is going to pander to people to get reelected. And had I gotten elected, I would have been thrown out of office so fast. 

DUBNER: Okay. So you were known for most of your life as Brian Riedl. In fact, that’s your byline on this piece in City Journal. But now you’re Jessica Riedl. Can you just give me the TL;DR on that?

RIEDL: I’ve been transgender since I was four. Several years ago, I began transitioning to Jessica, and the response has been very supportive and positive. I still have my job. I still have my career. I’m working with members Capitol Hill. It’s been heartening that people are making it irrelevant. That’s what I want. My hope for my name change from Brian to Jessica was that it shouldn’t matter. I’m still an economist, my research is still what it is, and I want my gender to just kind of blend into the background. And I’ve been really heartened that that’s been the response so far. 

DUBNER: I’m really happy for you. That’s great news to hear, Jessica. I do wonder whether working in policy and politics, which is not the most serene environment, let’s be honest — there’s a lot of fighting, there’s a lot of dug-in heels and entrenched positions — I’m wondering if that political journey in any way prepared you for this personal transition? 

RIEDL: You know, I talk about this with my wife. I’ve never been popular in the first place. I have never been part of the in-group. So I get to the point where you kind of think people aren’t going to like me for this, and I think to myself, you know what? They didn’t like me before. It’s just a matter of, do you want to dislike me for my cold economic truths or dislike me for this? I’m going to alienate people either way. So, the hell with it. 

DUBNER: When you say that people would become angered by your “cold economic truths” — give me an example.

RIEDL: I’ll go back to when I started at the Heritage Foundation. I got my first job in Washington. I had just graduated from graduate school, I’m 26 years old, I get hired at the preeminent conservative think tank. You’re expected to support the home team. You’re expected generally to say nice things about Republicans and not Democrats. Instead, I start putting out report after report after report saying Bush is a big spender, and deficits are skyrocketing. The media liked it because the media loves to hear conservatives criticizing Republicans. So the next thing I know, I’m being cited on the front page of the Washington Post and the New York Times, and boy, was the Bush White House unhappy about that. I’m told that Karl Rove reached out to the president of my think tank, and told him to shut me up. They told me that you are not to have access to the Bush White House ever again. It got pretty dicey for a while. 

DUBNER: Were you fired? 

RIEDL: I was not fired. I was worried I would be. Credit to my bosses for standing up for me. Stuart Butler was my vice president who stood up for me. But my take was, I’m going to go where the numbers say, and I’m not going to be bullied or intimidated. I don’t really care. The vindication that I got is that although I was banned from the Bush White House, I eventually became close friends, colleagues, and coworkers with many of the Bush economists. Bush’s budget director, Rob Portman, recruited me to become his chief economist after he got elected to the Senate in 2010. So ultimately my criticism, my stubbornness, and my just-the-facts approach eventually won people over.

DUBNER: What kind of policies were you proposing or critiquing that inflamed the White House? 

RIEDL: This was the post-9/11 era, where in order to win defense spending hikes, Bush was offering Democrats big hikes on discretionary spending. Then in 2002, there was a farm bill that increased farm subsidies by 80 percent. And then in 2003, there was the Medicare drug entitlement. And I felt, as a fiscally conservative deficit hawk, there’s no way I can support this. I can’t look myself in the mirror, and I can’t have any credibility as an economist. So I really went after the farm bill. I really went after the Medicare bill. And I went after all the domestic spending, and I was told that it was not appreciated.

We checked in with Karl Rove to see if he had indeed “reached out to the ” of the Heritage Foundation to shut Riedl up. Here’s what Rove told us: “Not true. I’m actually a fan of Riedl’s work — and we had better things to do than try dictating to think-tank C.E.O.s who to hire.” 

DUBNER: So, if I had to nutshell your political, economic, or fiscal position in the spectrum of our current political scheme, where would you put yourself? 

RIEDL: I would call myself pragmatic and right-of-center. Generally, I support free markets, less spending, but I’m nonpartisan, I’m independent. Although I have worked for Republicans in the past, I am not a Republican today. My research is really focused on calling out errors and trying to bring both sides together as an honest broker. 

DUBNER: So if you consider yourself pragmatic and right-of-center, the Biden administration was what? 

RIEDL: Too-big government and too-big spending. Biden was elected as a moderate return to normalcy after Trump, and instead he added $4 trillion in new spending, enacted some tariffs, pushed up budget deficits, and overheated the economy to inflation. I would have preferred a more moderate bipartisan approach. 

DUBNER: The $4 trillion in new spending in the Biden administration — give me the top three or five categories there. 

RIEDL: Nearly half of it was the American Rescue Plan, which was the big stimulus bill shortly after taking office. We also had big increases in discretionary spending across the board. We had increases for veteran spending in the PACT Act. There was the infrastructure bill. And we had a lot of student loan bailouts. 

DUBNER: Okay, and now same thing for the second Trump administration — again, you’re pragmatic, right-of-center, he or it is what? 

RIEDL: Keep in mind, Trump added $8 trillion in new spending and tax cuts in his first term, and this time around, we’re seeing already trillions of dollars in new tax cuts, and pretty empty promises of spending cuts. DOGE is not really cutting spending. So it looks like Trump is also going to be a tax-cut-and-spending Republican pushing deficits up, too.

DUBNER: You’ve written that Donald Trump’s economic policies are “aggressively inflationary.” Can you say a bit more on that?

RIEDL: Trump wants to cut taxes, which is inflationary. Increase spending. Impose tariffs, which will raise prices. Deport immigrants, which will create shortages in certain industries that push up prices. After all those inflationary policies, he continues to threaten the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low, which will push up inflation even higher. Pretty ironic for someone who was elected president running against Biden’s inflation. I pull my hair out most days because I see two sides that are Dunning-Kruger-ing, up and down, screaming at each other when both are making big mistakes. 

DUBNER: For people who aren’t familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect, what do you mean by that? 

RIEDL: The Dunning-Kruger effect is the reality that sometimes the people who know the least are the most confident that they’re right. 

DUBNER: So, Jessica, you recently published a piece in City Journal, the journal of the Manhattan Institute. The headline was “Correcting the Top Ten Tax Myths.” I never thought I would say this about a fairly long, wonky, chart-filled article about taxes, but it was borderline thrilling. First of all, thank you for making tax policy a little bit sexy. I want to dig into the ten myths, but first let me just ask you why did you write this, and what were the circumstances? Because I could imagine that you or someone decided that this needs discussion now, because tax policy is always important. But I also wonder if this is just what you think about, and maybe even dream about every night? Is it just something you dash off on a napkin and publish? 

RIEDL: This report was in many ways the product of many of my reports, which is I got really mad reading some articles and I got really mad reading Twitter. I see people arguing, using all wrong information. And not just on Twitter, but I hear politicians saying stuff, and going, “That is just not true.” I write some of these reports with my hair on fire and smoke coming out of my ears, going, “No, no, no.” But the other reason I wrote this was, we were at the time — last December, when this was released — heading into one of the most consequential years in tax policy. We have $4 trillion in 10-year tax cuts to renew and a new president, who has made all sorts of tax promises. So I wanted to give people the background knowledge so that we could have a smarter national debate. And that meant going after the conservative myths and the liberal myths. 

DUBNER: You write, “As Washington prepares for a 2025 dominated by tax policy, the debate is likely to bring a fresh recirculation of the most common myths.” Let me just explore that first statement of yours. Are we sure that 2025 is going to be dominated by tax policy? Because it seems that in the first several weeks of the Trump administration, as we speak, that the agenda has been dominated by many, many, many issues — big issues, Russia and Ukraine, DOGE, immigration, and so on — and one topic I’m hearing very little conversation about, so far at least, is tax policy. 

RIEDL: You are correct to correct me. I should have better anticipated the return of the highly rated Trump Show. Every day, you just never know what the Trump Show is going to bring. Although some will suggest that the reason we’re hearing about this flurry of activity is so that we don’t hear about the taxes and spending being debated in Congress. 

DUBNER: What do you mean by that? That sounds like a nice little Washington conspiracy theory. Can you unpack it? 

RIEDL: The Trumpists have said in the past that if we do a huge blitz of activity in the first couple of weeks, the media can only cover so much. The people can only focus on so much. They might pick 10 percent of it to get angry about, and create a backlash, but that means the other 90 percent, it’s going to slip through. Steve Bannon talks about this. If you look at DOGE, for instance, all this time that Elon Musk is getting all these headlines for cutting, what, 1/35 of 1 percent of the federal budget? Congress is putting together $4 trillion in tax cuts, and people aren’t talking about it. Isn’t that interesting?

DUBNER: When you say putting together $4 trillion, you mean in the form of extending the 2017 cuts, correct?

RIEDL: 00:47:58] At least.

DUBNER: Yeah. You write that there are “false narratives about taxes from both the conservative and liberal sides.” Could you just lay out quickly the false narratives? Let’s do first the conservative side.

RIEDL: The conservative tax framework makes the mistake of vastly overrating the positives of tax cuts. The first two myths are that tax cuts pay for themselves — they typically don’t — and that tax cuts will bring spending cuts by starving the beast. Both of those myths are really about the magical power of tax cuts that, while I like tax cuts — I’m a fiscal conservative, I want revenues to be as low as can be sustained — these arguments are heavy exaggerations of the power of tax cuts. 

DUBNER: Now let me have the principal false narratives from the liberal side. 

RIEDL: The liberal narrative is an equity-distribution narrative. It is that the middle class pays all the taxes, big business and wealthy individuals don’t pay anything, the reason we have deficits is because of these tax cuts, and we can fix deficits if we just do what Europe does and tax the rich and corporations at high levels. It’s a really convenient narrative because it tells people what they want to hear, which is that you’re getting screwed, and if we just screw the big guys, we can solve the problem without touching you. But the numbers are very clear that that narrative is extraordinarily exaggerated, and that actually the rich pay most of the taxes. Perhaps not as much as liberals want. And we actually have in America the most progressive tax system in the O.E.C.D. It is more progressive than Europe, not less.

DUBNER: Can you talk for a moment about where those misperceptions come from? Because as I hear you speak, the only legitimate source I can imagine for these misperceptions is from the politicians themselves. In which case it’s the political system that is largely responsible for the misperception.

RIEDL: Absolutely. Politicians win elections by creating narratives. The narratives are meant to explain why the things their base naturally wants are good ideas. If you tell conservatives, “Look, I know you guys don’t want to pay taxes, but you can collect just as much revenue, and cut spending,” you’re telling them what they want to hear to justify what they already want. On the liberal side, there’s also the view of, “Well, I don’t want to pay taxes, the rich people should have to pay.” If politicians say, “Yes, you’re right, don’t worry, you won’t pay anything, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk will pay it all, and in fact, you can have a socialist utopia, and it won’t cost you anything.” Both sides are promising their voters a free lunch. Republicans promise their people that with low taxes, you’ll get all this revenue and spending cuts. And progressives promise their people that we can tax everybody else and you’ll get lots of spending. 

DUBNER: You make the point that Republicans typically campaign on this set of lower-taxes/lower-spending ideas. But if they win, and especially if they control Washington, then they just spend like crazy — spend as much, if not more than Democrats.

RIEDL: Yes. Republicans say if you cut taxes, you’ll take away the government’s allowance, and they’ll have no choice but to cut spending. It hasn’t happened. 

DUBNER: Now, for the Democrats, would you say that at least they tend to be a little bit more honest in carrying out their campaign promises, in that they say they want to tax and spend, and then they do? 

RIEDL: Yes, although Democrats don’t end up raising taxes. The only real broad tax hike we have had in the last half century was the Clinton tax hikes of ’93, and they were pretty small. As much as Democrats talk about, “We’re going to go in and tax the rich and pay for all of this,” Joe Biden didn’t significantly raise taxes. Barack Obama did not significantly raise taxes.

DUBNER: And so you get spending without taxation, which just drives your beloved deficit even further. 

RIEDL: Exactly. 

We run through Jessica Riedl’s ten tax myths one by one.

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Okay, here are what Jessica Riedl calls the “top 10 tax myths” in the U.S. system.

RIEDL: Myth one is that tax cuts pay for themselves. Tax cuts can bring some extra revenue. They almost never pay for themselves. Myth two is that tax cuts will starve the beast by forcing Congress to cut spending. But historically, it’s the opposite — when we cut taxes, Congress increases spending, and when we raise taxes, Congress cuts spending. Myth three is that the middle class pays higher tax rates than the rich. This is not true. If you take a look at all combined federal taxes, the top one percent pays 33 percent, the middle class pays 12, the bottom pays roughly 0. Myth four is that those old 91 percent tax rates in the 1950s produced all this new revenue. The reality is, nobody actually paid the 91 percent tax rates back then. In fact, virtually nobody paid over 50 percent in a tax bracket, and those tax brackets raised virtually no revenue. Myth five is that Europe funds its bigger governments by taxing the rich more; in reality, they tax the rich about the same as the United States. And the entire overage in tax revenue for Europe is the result of value-added taxes, which are essentially national sales taxes that hit the middle class. Myth six is that tax cuts for the rich are the reason we have large budget deficits. The reality is that since 2000, we’ve cut taxes by two percent of G.D.P., of which maybe zero-point-six percent of G.D.P. is on the rich, but we’ve increased spending by six percent of G.D.P., a much bigger driver. Myth seven asserts that taxing corporations and millionaires can eliminate the deficit. You could tax them at 100 percent, and seize all their wealth — it doesn’t come close. Myth eight is that most of the 2017 tax cuts went to corporations and the wealthy; the reality is while they received bigger tax cuts in terms of pure dollars, as a share of the taxes they were paying, it was a roughly proportional income tax cut, everybody got their tax rate dropped by about one percentage point. Myth nine is that if we go back to the 1980 tax code, essentially repealing the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts, we’ll have painless deficit reduction. In reality, if we did that, the tax burden on the middle class would go through the roof — not just the rich, but the middle class — to unacceptably high levels. Myth ten is that America’s corporate taxes are far below international standards. The reality is we had the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world until 2017. And even right now, after the 2017 corporate tax cuts, our statutory and effective corporate tax rate is still in the top one-third. We also collect slightly more than other countries in business taxes, when you include passthrough corporations.

DUBNER: Okay, those are your ten myths. On the final one, about corporate tax rates — I assume you’re giving substantial credit there to the 2017 Trump cuts, or no? I mean, that’s where it came from. 

RIEDL: The 2017 tax cuts dropped us from being number one to about number 11 or 12 in the O.E.C.D. for corporate taxes.

DUBNER: When you’re talking about the perception that if you just tax the rich a lot more, then everything will be fine, and you lay out in this piece why that is an absurdly narrow and wrong view, it does make me think of the famous quote, I guess from Warren Buffett, talking about how “My secretary pays a lower tax rate than I do.” Can you talk me through that? I think this is one of the big misunderstandings, the difference between a salaried worker and someone whose earnings are coming from investment generally. 

RIEDL: Warren Buffett said that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary because much of his income is in the form of capital gains, which is your investment returns, and capital gains don’t get taxed until you sell them. So it is true that in a given year, the increase in wealth is not necessarily being taxed at a high rate. But if you look at the actual data, even if you take into account capital gains taxes, high earners pay a significantly higher rate than low earners.

DUBNER: In promoting what you call this myth that high earners are underpaying, you talk about how the Biden administration re-categorized a bunch of income from the top piece of the pyramid. Can you talk about that for a minute? 

RIEDL: The Biden administration said rich people only pay an eight percent tax rate. The way they calculated that was pretty dishonest. First off, they weren’t just counting income. They were counting total wealth, including theoretical wealth, like your investment status today, which has not been realized as income. It’s really just a number on a spreadsheet that hasn’t been produced. The other thing is, not only did they exaggerate their income to make it look like their taxes weren’t enough, but they also didn’t count the corporate and estate taxes that wealthy people are paying. So they lowballed their taxes while raising their income in order to produce a lower tax rate. It was pretty dishonest. 

DUBNER: I know a lot of economists who have worked in Republican White Houses and Democratic White Houses, and in different organizations affiliated with the White House, and I know them primarily from academia. Within academia, I’ve always had the belief that you have to be an honest broker, because your arguments and research are being interrogated, so rigorously by your peers. And you just can’t really B.S. So, when I hear you talk about economists and policymakers in the Biden administration telling this story that just doesn’t sound like you could justify it at all, it makes me wonder what’s going on there? When bright and I assume well-intentioned people, economists and others, come to Washington — and I’m talking about the left and the right — is this dishonesty going on? Is this just, like, how the game is played and we have to play it that way? Is it that it’s such a complicated scenario that they figure they can tell a little white lie and get away with it, because it’s too hard to figure out the bigger truth?

RIEDL: All of those explanations are correct. At this point, I pretty much know everybody who works in economic policy in Washington. I’ve worked with everybody. And I’ve seen some of them who spent their entire careers pushing for certain ideas and policies with intellectual integrity, get into a position of real power and influence and frankly, become hacks. It’s the seduction of power. It’s also a certain view that this is how the game is played. The other side is going to play dirty, so we have to play dirty too. But it’s the noble lie that will eventually get us to where we want to be, which is the right policies. I can’t work that way. This is one reason I haven’t worked in a White House yet, because I can’t do that. 

DUBNER: May I predict? You won’t.

RIEDL: No. I can’t play this game. Even when I worked on Capitol Hill — I was very fortunate to work for one of the most honest senators, Rob Portman, who was a former president’s budget director, but even just working on the Hill and seeing the dishonesty and compromises that had to be made, I couldn’t do it. Your credibility in Washington is all you have.

DUBNER: Here’s a sobering line from your article. You write, “Destructive tax policies often result from both parties relying on a series of outdated, simplistic, and false assumptions about the federal tax system and its relationship to the economy.” What would you say are the ultimate costs of tax policy being so widely either misunderstood or manipulated? 

RIEDL: We have, everyone would agree, a disaster of a tax code today. It’s extraordinarily complicated. It is extraordinarily inefficient. We all make mistakes on our tax forms, because we can’t even tell. And it doesn’t raise enough money to fund our spending. That’s the real cost. 

DUBNER: What share of our current fiscal irresponsibility, let’s call it, would you say can be attributed directly to tax policy?

RIEDL: Oh, boy. 

DUBNER: I can’t believe I stumped you on that one.

RIEDL: That’s a philosophical question, to a certain degree. It depends on what you think the optimal level of taxes and spending should be. I will say that since 2000, about a third of the rise in deficits can be attributable to tax policy, and about two-thirds of it can be attributable to spending policy. 

DUBNER: So if we somehow miraculously had what Jessica Riedl considers the optimal tax policy, how far would that go toward addressing the larger issue of fiscal irresponsibility?

RIEDL: Right now, we collect about 17 percent of G.D.P. in federal taxes, which is approximately the historical level, since 1960. There’s a lot of ways I would improve the tax code. I would get rid of a lot of the deductions. I would simplify. I would get rid of tax preferences. But really, we’re going to stay between 17 and maybe up to 20 percent of G.D.P. in revenues. It’s still not going to be enough to fix the budget, though, because spending is rising so fast.

DUBNER: So if we want to look at the big picture, the entire “fiscal irresponsibility,” including the national debt, I’m starting to wonder if these 10 tax myths may be more like the hole and not the donut? 

RIEDL: I would agree with that. If you want to know why we’re facing big deficits, spending has historically been 20 percent of G.D.P., revenues have historically been 17. Spending is going to 33 percent of G.D.P. over the next 30 years. You can get tax policy right, but you’re not going to be able to chase 33 percent of G.D.P. and spending. You need to address that side too. 

Okay, let’s address that side.

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Okay, let’s define some terms: the federal deficit is the difference between what the government spends and what the government takes in over a given year. Last year, the U.S. deficit was $1.8 trillion. When you stack last year’s deficit onto the previous year’s, and the years before that — this is what’s called the national debt. As of this recording, the U.S. national debt is around $29 trillion. To put that in perspective, here’s one more number: our national debt currently stands at around 98 percent of our G.D.P. — and that’s the highest it’s been since right after World War II. So when people like Jessica Riedl say they are very concerned about our national debt, and the lack of a political plan to address it — well, they are right to be concerned. For starters, just paying the interest on that debt is extraordinarily expensive.

RIEDL: Since 2021, interest on the debt has tripled, from $350 billion to nearly $1 trillion, and it’s going to go to $2 trillion a decade from now. What that means is that over the past three years, interest has surpassed Medicaid, defense, and now Medicare to become the second-largest item in the budget after Social Security, and it’s going to pass Social Security in 2042.

There is no one simple explanation for why the debt has ballooned like this; there are a variety of contributors, and the Covid pandemic certainly didn’t help. But if you had to identify one main villain, Riedl has an obvious candidate: a federal government that absolutely cannot stop spending money.

RIEDL: This is going to amaze younger people, but from about 1985 to 2000, spending fell from 23 percent of G.D.P. to 18 percent of G.D.P., and politicians got elected promising not to increase spending. Since about 2000, after we finally balanced the budget, lawmakers threw out any sort of fiscal responsibility. And even after the budget unbalanced, we created this arms race where neither party believes they can get elected without promising big tax cuts and big spending increases for everybody. Particularly under Trump’s first term, Biden, and Trump’s current term, we’re seeing the biggest spending increases we’ve seen in 50 years.

DUBNER: You say politicians make these promises. What would happen if they didn’t? Would they simply lose?

RIEDL: Politicians don’t know how to win otherwise, they believe they would lose. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, when you ran for president, you had to show that every promise was totally paid for. That’s not expected today. 

DUBNER: I mean, you make Washington sound like a flock of tweens who just discovered Klarna or Afterpay, and they just go crazy buying every pair of shoes and gaming system. Is that essentially what we’re looking at? 

RIEDL: Yes. It’s frustrating for me, because I work closely with members of Congress and top members of presidential administrations. I come in, I brief members of both parties, I testify before Congress, I’m in the strategy sessions when fiscal issues are discussed. And they will tell you in the meetings that they know this is irresponsible, they know this is unsustainable, they know the difficult decisions must be made, and they know we’re going to crash if we don’t. But then they say, “Yeah, but I can’t say this publicly, or I’ll lose my seat.” So they say, “I’m just going to try to pander the best I can, and hope that when the consequences come, my successor is in office instead of me.” 

DUBNER: You mentioned that Trump outspent Biden two to one. Now, in Trump Two, I’m curious where you think that’s heading. 

RIEDL: All indications are, we’re going to get really big deficits just like Trump One. We’re already having $4 trillion that will cost to extend the expiring 2017 tax cuts. Trump wants to do the additional tax cuts — no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on Social Security benefits — that could very easily bump us up to $6 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years. Then on the spending side, Trump and Congressional Republicans are already looking to substantially increase spending for defense and border security. Right there, you’re looking at about $8 trillion. We can talk about DOGE. DOGE does not give any indication that it’s a serious effort. Elon Musk and his merry band of budget cutters seem to be focusing on symbolic things like D.E.I. contracts, Politico subscriptions, federal employment that serve a culture war purpose for MAGA warriors but in terms of the budget deficit, they’re not even a rounding error. And the danger, I will say, about Trump’s approach — when he took office in 2017, the deficit was $585 billion. Today, he takes office with a deficit of $1.8 trillion. So doing business-as-usual deficit irresponsibility is a lot worse when you’re already inheriting such a mess.

DUBNER: So whether it’s the second Trump administration, whether it’s the administration that follows that one — which, if you listen to Trump himself, he might like it to be a third Trump administration — but whoever comes after, if you look down the road 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 years, do you see that this is how the Republic ends? 

RIEDL: That’s a really big question. The national debt is projected to rise from about $30 trillion today to $200 trillion in 30 years, even before you take into account new expansions. So something’s got to give. But it’s hard, because how do you convince people to make tough decisions today to avoid something bad happening in the future? They don’t want to.

DUBNER: The problem you’re describing now — which is that politicians make promises that are bad for the country but good for them to get elected, and they believe that if they made promises that were good for the country, they simply wouldn’t get elected — it feels as though a very clever game theorist could help adjust that equilibrium. I’ve heard you talk about politicians as being weathervanes — they just reflect what’s blowing out there, they don’t actually set the agenda. Can you see a way, whether it’s through game theory or something perhaps more practical, that would reset the notion of what it means to be a sane and fiscally responsible elected official? 

RIEDL: This is what the very dry topic of budget-process reform is often about. Trying to constrain ourselves today, to feel the pain today, so that we don’t have the avalanche later. And you hear things like, you know, balanced-budget amendment, make lawmakers pay for their proposals today, make them pay for a new proposal so that we can have the cost hit us right away rather than making promises for the future. The problem we face on these reforms is, how do you get the inmates to lock the asylum? Politicians pander, voters get big tax cuts and big spending, and we dump the cost on people who aren’t going to pay it for 20, 30 years and aren’t paying attention. How do you rally everybody to change those incentives?

DUBNER: There are two arguments you make to address the problem that stick out as particularly interesting to me, and I would think they’d stick out to most listeners as particularly vexing. One of them is the need for entitlement reform, especially Social Security, but also Medicare and Medicaid. And the second is the need to raise taxes on the middle class. So let’s do those one at a time, starting with entitlement reform. What solutions do you propose there? 

RIEDL: Here is something scary about the federal budget. Social Security and Medicare do not pay for themselves in taxes. There’s a myth that your payroll taxes and your Medicare premiums pay for your Social Security benefits, and that they can’t run deficits. This is wildly false. They both run huge deficits. Over the next 30 years, Social Security and Medicare are going to run a cash deficit of $124 trillion.

DUBNER: Okay, even I can tell that’s a lot of money. But let me just back up for a minute. Why doesn’t tax withholding cover that? 

RIEDL: For Social Security, because your taxes today just pay for current beneficiaries. It’s not saved for you when you’re older, and if you have a lot more people retiring, you’re not going to have enough taxpayers to pay for all the benefits. 

DUBNER: Is that because when Social Security benefits first began being distributed, there was nothing in the bank because the beneficiaries of those distributions hadn’t contributed via tax? 

RIEDL: Exactly. It was pay-as-you-go because there were no savings at that point. On Medicare, your payroll tax only pre-funds Medicare Part A, which is hospital insurance. You do not pre-fund Medicare Part B. Again, Social Security and Medicare face a $124 trillion shortfall. The rest of the budget is actually balanced over the next 30 years. It’s not seniors’ fault. This is the system that was handed to them. It’s the system they paid into. They did nothing wrong. However, the reality is that even if you adjust for net-present value, seniors are getting substantially more from Social Security and Medicare than they ever paid into the system, even if you adjust for inflation and interest rates and all of that. In fact, for Medicare, the typical senior is getting back triple what they paid in. If you multiply that by 74 million people, all retired now, all getting triple what they paid in, the math doesn’t work. 

DUBNER: So do you have any ideas to deal with that problem? And let’s keep in mind what happened in France when Emmanuel Macron required that people work a little bit longer before they draw their retirement savings, and that produced a political catastrophe. What do you see as viable ways to address that problem? 

RIEDL: I put out a 30-year budget plan last June that stabilized the debt over 30 years, fully scored, no gimmicks. It put everything on the table. But the reality is, most of the savings have to come from Social Security and Medicare, because that’s where most of the deficit is coming from. For Social Security, there’s only three levers: raise the tax, raise the age, reform benefits. My plan includes new taxes and a higher age, and lower benefits for high earners. 

DUBNER: Why are lower benefits for high earners not already either on the table or standard? 

RIEDL: That’s a good question. Right now, somebody who makes a lot of money over their lifetime, retires very wealthy, can start out with about $60 or $65,000 in annual Social Security benefits. If you’re married, you’re looking at about $130,000. We’re talking millionaires, and they’re getting back more than they ever paid in. I don’t understand why we wouldn’t start there, and say, if you’re a millionaire, why are you getting so much back in Social Security? 

DUBNER: What you’re talking about is a form of means-testing, correct?

RIEDL: Absolutely.

DUBNER: Means-testing as a concept seems to have become a bit of a third rail in Washington. Am I wrong on that? 

RIEDL: It has become a third rail. Democrats don’t like it. Republicans don’t like it. But the case for means-testing is, look, if you’re going to reform benefits, should you start with the poor or the rich? Seems to me that you should start with the people who can afford it, especially when Social Security is supposed to be a poverty-prevention program, it’s not supposed to be a universal, huge, get-rich benefit. 

DUBNER: So, why do you think that kind of reform gained zero traction, as far as I’m aware at least, during the Biden administration? Other than the obvious fact that it would be electoral suicide?

RIEDL: Because it would be electoral suicide. There is a perception that Social Security is 100 percent pre-funded in payroll taxes, everybody is just getting back what they put in, and any cut against that is an outrage and theft. None of that is true, but no one wants to have that fight. I get yelled at nonstop by people who actually believe that their Social Security taxes are sitting in a bank account in the Social Security trust fund with their name on it. You can tell them it’s not true. They will not believe you. 

DUBNER: What do you think would have happened if Joe Biden, in the last year of his term, let’s say — before he dropped out, when there was still a substantial amount of credibility — had made a commercial and looked in the camera and said, “Look, the deficit has gotten crazy. Democrats have contributed. Republicans have contributed. It’s been going on for many, many years. No one seems to acknowledge it’s a big problem. But those of us who know in D.C. on both sides realize it is a big problem. A huge part of that is Social Security benefits, and a huge part of the issue there is that many people who don’t ‘need’ those Social Security benefits, if they drew less, we would go a long way toward solving this problem. And let me nominate myself as someone who’s earned enough money over the course of my lifetime, that the Social Security benefit that I receive is literally meaningless to me, and I’m going to surrender it. And I’d like to lead a charge to do that by the millions.” What do you think would happen with that? 

RIEDL: I would like to think Republicans would be encouraged and work with the president, but I think partisanship would probably win the day. I think Democrats would not have the confidence to take that message to the American people, and therefore would distance themselves. What’s frustrating about all of this is, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, they would agree with that commercial. They would agree with every word of it. But what they would say is, “The politics don’t work. I can’t get behind it.”

DUBNER: Do you know whether Biden does receive Social Security benefits? 

RIEDL: I would assume he does. Social Security, you have to start drawing at a certain point.

DUBNER: So that suggests we have another president who could give the same commercial. What do you think would happen if Donald Trump would say to the camera, “Look, people, I’ve looked at the deficit situation. Social Security is a huge part of this. And a huge part of that is that too many rich people are drawing Social Security benefits that they don’t need. So for the good of this country, let’s stop that. I’m a billionaire. I don’t need the Social Security. I’m going to give it up. Why don’t you?” What would happen then? 

RIEDL: I think Republicans would get on board because I think Republicans are a little more apt to support Social Security reform. And if they have the cover of Trump, they’ll do what Trump says. I think Democrats would light themselves on fire outside of the White House as a protest. Because not only is it a president that they don’t like, for many good reasons, but this would be seen in the context of, this is the beginning of cutting Social Security to pay for tax cuts for the rich. The only way we’re going to fix this stuff is if both parties privately come together and put everything on the table. You really have to do the tax side and the Medicare side and put it all together so that everybody is working together, and everybody is sacrificing. Because if you just try to do one piece of it — we’re just going to raise taxes, we’re just going to reform Social Security and Medicare — that’s going to be seen as a partisan scheme to try to hurt the other side.

DUBNER: But based on everything you’ve told me today, there is no way I’m going to hold my breath until that happens.

RIEDL: Yes although, interestingly, there are — you can call this encouraging or discouraging, it’s up to you — there are dozens of members of Congress and senators who are holding bipartisan meetings, coming up with ways to solve this. On the one level, that’s encouraging that they’re doing this behind the scenes. It’s discouraging because I’m not allowed to tell you their names.

DUBNER: That was my next question. In fact, I was looking them up as you were talking, you know, and I was finding no help online. 

RIEDL: If I revealed the names, I would not be able to start my car. And that’s the discouraging side of this, is that they are building plans behind the scenes, but they also are scared to death of ever doing this publicly.

DUBNER: Let’s go to your second big argument that stood out to me as particularly vexing for some people: the need to raise taxes on the middle class.

RIEDL: There’s so many directions to go on this. But let me start out with: If we seized every penny of wealth from every billionaire in America — their homes, their cars, their stocks, their child’s Nerf football, and we sold every penny of it — 

DUBNER: Don’t forget the yachts. That’s the example you use. 

RIEDL: The yachts. You could pay for eight months of government spending once, and then it would be gone forever. Not eight months every year — eight months once. 

DUBNER: And it would crash all the stock markets.

RIEDL: Because you would be taking all the money out of the stock market. So your 401(k) becomes a 201(k). Another way of looking at it is, even if we created a 100 percent tax rate on all income over $500,000, and everybody still worked, you still wouldn’t have enough to come close to balancing the budget. It is mathematically impossible to get there by taxing the rich. The reality is the middle class in America is dramatically under-taxed, compared to everywhere else in the developed world. You can’t get there without taxing the middle class more.

DUBNER: Let me pause you there for a moment and just reflect on what you just said: “The middle class in America is dramatically undertaxed.” I would guess that maybe three percent of the people who listen to this show would nod their heads, and the other 97 percent are sure that either they misheard or that you are some kind of fill in the blank with the worst word you can imagine.

RIEDL: Don’t shoot the messenger, please. According to I.R.S. data, the median earning family in America, when you take into account all of their deductions and credits, they pay a three percent income tax rate and a 12 percent tax rate if you include their Social Security taxes, the corporate taxes passed on to them, tobacco and alcohol. Three percent and 12 percent. This has dropped dramatically over the last 40 years. The tax rate paid by the middle class is less than half what it was when Reagan got elected. In fact, it’s the lowest tax rate the middle class has had since before World War II. Compare this to Europe, where the middle class pays substantially higher taxes, because Europe hits voters with very high payroll taxes and significant value-added taxes, which are essentially a national sales tax. The reason Europe collects more money than the U.S. is not because they tax the rich more, it’s because they tax middle- and lower-earners more.

DUBNER: To blow minds even further, how would you characterize the tax rate paid by lower earners in the U.S.? 

RIEDL: The bottom 40 percent, once you take into account the earned-income tax credit and the child credit, the bottom 40 percent collectively pay a negative income tax rate and almost no taxes overall. In 2024, the bottom 40 percent paid a total of $60 billion in federal taxes. The top 20 percent paid $3.3 trillion in federal taxes. 

DUBNER: Let’s take that pyramid from the bottom up now. The lower earners, the middle earners and the upper earners. What’s the best way to give a macro description of the share of tax revenues being gleaned from those three sections? 

RIEDL: Ninety percent of the income taxes are paid by the top-earning 20 percent. Thirteen percent are paid by the second-earning 20 percent. And the rest pays negative-three percent of the income tax burden collectively. These numbers are way up from where they were 30, 40 years ago.

DUBNER: Way up, meaning the system has gotten more progressive over time. 

RIEDL: Substantially more progressive.

DUBNER: Have Republicans contributed to that progressivism as much as Democrats, or no?

RIEDL: Absolutely. One of the ways the tax code has become more progressive is that we’ve taken 10 million families off the income tax rolls since 2000 with lower tax rates, child credits, the E.I.T.C. That’s why we’re so progressive. We tax the rich at normal international levels, but we don’t tax the poor.

DUBNER: Now to be fair, that net-negative federal tax was essentially a tradeoff for lower entitlements, no?

RIEDL: Possibly, but entitlement spending is still pretty high up. 

DUBNER: So, let me ask you, finally — tell me some favorite tax reforms that you think might work in this country or tax policies from other places and/or times.

RIEDL: I like consumption taxes better than income taxes, because I think it’s better for the economy. You should tax what you take out of the economy, not what you put into the economy. But at this point, switching to a consumption tax is pretty politically risky because it’ll hit seniors who consume more, some of the wealthier people who don’t spend as much won’t be hit as hard. So, you have to make adjustments to make it a little more progressive on the rich, and give seniors a break.

DUBNER: Well, let me ask you this. I already brought up the game theorists. There’s another sector in economics, the behavioral economists. One thing that behavioral economists and psychologists like Danny Kahneman and others focus on is the very problem that you’ve identified, which is people are really bad at making decisions now with the future in mind, whether it’s their future self or the future economy and the future debt of their country. Is there anything in the behavioral economics literature that you feel might be fruitful in trying to change public perception?

RIEDL: That’s a great question. You mentioned Danny Kahneman. He was my professor in graduate school. I do think principles that you learn in behavioral economics, like loss aversion — people are more worried about losing what they have than gaining what they can. But ultimately what I’ve learned is people are going to pick what’s comfortable for them, or advantageous for them, in the short term. Which is to say, “Give me more money, government!” And then reason backwards on why that’s actually an okay policy. 

DUBNER: I love that I asked you for a solution — you gave me more of the problem, which I guess indicates how bad the problem is. But maybe you could go back to a time or maybe you can point to other countries where people believe the reality that even if future gains cannot be held in your hand today, they are very valuable. Can you point to a place or time where that belief has been mainstream? 

RIEDL: Not as much in economics, but one example that’s gotten a lot of attention from us economic nerds is the way young people have rallied around climate change. That’s something where the main effect is going to be decades away. Yet a lot of young people talk about, we need to make sacrifices now, because if we wait 30 or 40 years for the climate, it’ll be too late. A lot of economists try to figure out how can we get young people to apply that same framework towards the debt.

DUBNER: So, it sounds to me as though you consider yourself a principled empirical researcher. I’m in favor of all three of those words, I have to say. Is there room in the world for a creature like you? 

RIEDL: Increasingly not. One of the things I see about the debate right now on taxes and spending and deficits is, it’s all driven by partisan tribalism. The people who cheer my criticisms of one party’s president will get angry when I apply the same standard to their party’s president. Ultimately, I have faith that the math eventually always wins. The laws of economics always win. Eventually we’re going to get to where we need to be, whether we like it or not.

I’d like to thank Jessica Riedl for this conversation, and for the information. I take her last point as a challenge to all of us: to apply the same standards to the politicians you support as the ones you don’t. It is probably unrealistic to suggest this, maybe even idiotic, but if every one of us were to start thinking that way, and acting that way, we might start pushing back against the political absurdities that have gotten us locked into this situation. I’m probably wrong; it’s unlikely to happen; but I’d rather start rowing in the right direction, even against the tide, than to keep drifting further out to sea. What do you think? Let me know. Our email is radio@freakonomics.com.

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Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Theo Jacobs. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff includes Alina Kulman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Aboagye, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, Jasmin Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, Jon Schnaars, Morgan Levey, Neal Carruth, Sarah Lilley, and Zack Lapinski. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; our composer is Luis Guerra.