Karl Auerbach

Headline: "Trump seeks $1.5tn for defense department in budget request to Congress"

Headline: "White House Seeks 40 Percent Increase in Military Budget"

Let's run some numbers - Each $billion in Federal expenditure costs taxpayers about $3 per person.

$1.5tn is 1500 $billion - which works out to be $4,500 per tax payer.

So trump is asking for $4,500 from each person, each man, each woman, each child, in the US.

Or for a family of 4, that's $18,000 in taxes to pay for the trump/hegseth wars and war machines.

Corporations, like Amazon, Tesla, Exxon, won't pay a penny - they tend to escape taxes altogether. Same for many $billionaires - for instance none of the Trump family will pay a dime for this.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/03/us/trump-news

White House Seeks 40 Percent Increase in Military Spending

The New York Times
Apr 3 at 5:47pmWeb
Show threadKarl Auerbach2d ago

By-the-way, the four page Twain piece "Letter To The Earth" can be found at page 68 in the following .pdf of the DeVoto collection of rarely read Twain pieces called "Letters From The Earth"

(I do recommend the full book as well, also DeVoto's histories - he won a Pulitizer for at least one of them.)

https://faculty.mtsac.edu/jmcfaul/Letters%20From%20The%20Earth.pdf

Show threadAlex P Roe 2d ago
@karlauerbach Won’t this effectively cancel out the tax cuts Trump made such a fuss about?
Show threadKarl Auerbach2d ago

@alex_p_roe What tax cuts?

We just finished our taxes and although the number of pages in our personal return has decreased (by about a hundred pages) I can't say the same about the effective overall tax rate.

(We also own a for-profit business corporation that has its own tax situation distinct from our own. We aren't like General Electric or Salesforce - our business actually pays Federal and state taxes.)

Show threadAlex P Roe 2d ago
@karlauerbach Ah ha, yet another case of alt-cuts. Sort of suspected as much. So there won’t also be the largest tax refund of all time either?! This makes Trump’s demand for war funding even more outrageous. The US’s golden age does appear to lack the essential golden bit. Trump is going to get much worse, isn’t he?
Show threadNazo1d ago
@alex_p_roe @karlauerbach He did tax cuts for the rich. For example, I think Trump's tax cuts during his first time of his reign over America was the first time Bezos paid $0 instead of I guess probably $100 or something. (It drove Trump crazy at the time because he hated Bezos then for owning one of the news services that was only sometimes flattering, but I imagine he has forgotten by now.)
Show threadbk2d ago
@karlauerbach
Finally, a semblance of cost-benefit analysis!
Show threadyuhasz012d ago
Usual lame GOP president crap: increase defense spending, cut social programs. @karlauerbach
Show threadbouriquet2d ago
@karlauerbach A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
They have no idea how to budget for anything, particularly military equipment. This kind of thinking just pads the pockets of military contractors for systems that cost too much, don’t work well and are not really needed.
Show threadTrump & Epstein: Biz partners.2d ago

@karlauerbach
#OrangeJuliusCaesar wants $1.5T for his "Department of War".

Meanwhile, he tells voters we simply can't afford to pay for Child Care.

Show threadFrank Frank2d ago

@karlauerbach

Howbout we get these greedy cucks to pay for tRUMP's War. And the Oily-garchs can also contribute to their private U.S. Military 🪖 oil protection services.

Show threadWesDym2d ago
@karlauerbach Your comment suggests that children pay taxes. They do not. Lots of adults don't, either.
Show threadKarl Auerbach2d ago

@wesdym You have a valid point - the tax burden of this $1.5Trillion expense will fall on taxpayers unequally, as it usually does. Note, however, that many wealthy people and large corporations will pay nothing towards this huge expense.

Moreover, because El Cheato is "balancing" this military expense by cutting things like education support, ACA subsidies, etc this expense will be borne by non-taxpaying children, albeit indirectly.

As is (or was) often said "There Ain't No Thing As A Free Lunch" - TANSTAAFL.

Show threadWesDym2d ago

@karlauerbach My point was actually much more basic than that. OP said:

1) "$1.5tn is 1500 $billion - which works out to be $4500 **per tax payer.** [Emphasis mine, and ignoring several writing errors]

2) "So trump is asking for $4500 from each person, each man, each woman, each child, in the US." [Again, ignoring writing errors]

Since the numbers are the same, that means that OP believes that "each person" in the US is a taxpayer. Including "each child".

Show threadKarl Auerbach2d ago

@wesdym I did, in a prior post, mention that yes, not everyone pays taxes.

So, rather than defending trump and his trillion and a half dollar per year military, I will concede that you are right but in so doing I will also mention that that simply changes the calculation in a way that *increases* the burden on each tax payer (many of whom have non-tax paying family members - children make up a bit more than 20% of the US population.)

So rather than a "typical" four member family paying $18,000, it may pay a few thousand less and single taxpayers may pay a few thousand more.

To my mind that is a distinction without a difference.

As a net, the cost of trump's mega-military will land almost entirely on middle and lower class tax payers and relatively rarely on large corporations or the extremely wealthy.

And as I mentioned in that other post, there will be an indirect cost on many (whether taxpayers or not) in terms of reduced health care, worse infrastructure, higher education costs, and so on.

Show threadEl Duvelle1d ago
@karlauerbach never mind paying for it, the trump family is even trying to profit from the trump war:
Firm backed by Trump sons tries to sell drone interceptors to Gulf states being attacked by Iran
Firm backed by Trump sons tries to sell drone interceptors to Gulf states being attacked by Iran

Drone-maker backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr tries to win contracts with Gulf countries protected by US

The Guardian
Show threadKevin P. Fleming1d ago
@karlauerbach But just think of all the 'job creation' this money will generate!