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Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is outlining a number of concrete steps that the US government can take to reduce its huge budget deficit.
In a new interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Thiel takes aim at the government’s habit of spending way more than it makes.
According to the billionaire, the amount of taxpayer dollars going to interest payments on the country’s over $35 trillion national debt has gone up significantly.
“We have a crazy, crazy budget deficit and presumably, you have to do one of three things: you have to raise taxes a lot, you have to cut spending a lot or you’re just going to keep borrowing money.”
Data from the U.S. Treasury Department shows that the national deficit has surged to $1.516 trillion in just the first 10 months of the 2024 fiscal year. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects the national deficit to soar to $2 trillion by September 30th, 2024, when the current fiscal year expires.
Thiel says the US needs to cut down on spending to ease its debt burden, but highlights that the cost-reduction methods that he has in mind will be unappealing to the general public.
“It would be sort of figure out ways to have smaller governments, figure out ways to increase the age on Social Security, means test Social Security so not everyone gets it. Just figure out ways to gradually dial back a lot of these government benefits.
That’s insanely unpopular. It’s completely unrealistic on that level.”
The billionaire notes that means testing Social Security is just another of saying that the benefit will only be given to Americans who need it.
The US government allocates the most money to Social Security, spending $1.21 trillion from October 2023 to August 2024. Interest payments on debt come in at number two at $763 billion over the same time frame.
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