Thread

10-year Treasury yield climbs above 5.3% to a level not seen in 24 years

122 points · 193 comments · kaycebasques

guelo · 1790821629 · focus · HN ↗
It's weird how the discussion on this rarely mentions Trump's giant 2017 and 2025 tax cuts, plus the insane increase in military spending. Somehow it's always about we need to cut entitlements.
People need to study this graph <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD" rel="nofollow">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD and think about what changed when.
1. missedthecue · 1790823421 · focus · HN ↗
  According to the CBO, the TCJA and 2025 cuts/extensions have reduced revenues by about $430B per year. That's only 20% of the current annual deficit. It's just so small compared to the trillions per year in entitlement spending. And of course, that's just a first-order reading of the tax cuts. The second-order effect is that the tax cuts led to more private sector spending and investment, which spurred a little more GDP growth. The CBO estimates $2.6T of cumulative GDP growth as a result of the tax cuts through 2028.
  <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54994" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54994
  So that's about $52B per year in taxation added back on that extra GDP growth, so the net effect of the cuts are around $380B reduced federal revenue per year, or 18% of the deficit.
  18% of the deficit is a lot but if you could snap your fingers and undo it, you now have a $1.7T problem instead of a $2.1T problem. Eventually you have to look at entitlements. There's just no way around it.
2. aftbit · 1790823758 · focus · HN ↗
  If you cross your eyes and squint a little bit, the following categories of 2026 spending are around the same size:
  $ 1 T : total defense (roughly) $ 1.7 T : total social security $ 1.1 T : total medicare $ 0.7 T : total medicaid $ 0.7 T : total other entitlements (SNAP, VA, etc) $ 1.1 T : net interest on the debt $ 1.0 T : all other discretionary spending
  The US took in somewhere around $5.6T in revenue in 2026. That's a net deficit of just under $2 T. Or roughly double the average size of the "block" of those separate spending categories. These are abased on Feb 2026 CBO assumptions. Net interest is going to keep rising as the Treasury yield rises.
  So ... we can't fix this by doing any one thing. Even if we were willing to completely end social security (while keeping the separate contribution tax), that wouldn't be enough. If we threw away our military entirely, we would only be half way there.
  We need to do everything a little bit, all at once.
  Raise taxes - corporate and personal, on every bracket, progressively more on the rich ... but this will not even be half of enough because of the strength of the debt bomb and the global flexibility of corporations.
  Cut defense spending - but not too much, because we also need to provide funding to repair alliances, rebuild our ancient navy, and rebuild our standoff and interceptor stockpiles after the recent middle east adventurism.
  Repair social security - cut benefits, add a means test, raise the contribution amount and limits ... lots of things to do here.
  Fix health care - it's just too damn expensive across the board; the US pays for this in the VA, medicare, medicaid, and the poor health of its workforce. I have no idea where to start on this one.
  The CBO has a ton of data on this kind of thing. I like their budget options page for exploring the forecasts for specific changes. Of course it's not as simple as adding the numbers together to get to the deficit, but it's a good place to learn more and ground some assumptions.
  <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options
  I got some of these numbers from:
  <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/62105" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbo.gov/publication/62105
  I used Claude to research this, but I wrote the post myself.
  1. zeroonetwothree · 1790824308 · focus · HN ↗
    You’re right. There no easy fix despite what 50% of the comments in this thread claim ;)
3. zeroonetwothree · 1790824225 · focus · HN ↗
  The effective tax rate has actually not changed that much in decades, regardless the “tax cuts” (more like “tax reallocations”)
4. josephcsible · 1790825509 · focus · HN ↗
  That's because even fully undoing those things wouldn't be sufficient to fix the deficit. When federal revenue is $5 trillion, entitlements cost $4 trillion, and interest on the existing debt is $1 trillion, you just fundamentally can't balance the budget without cutting entitlements. All of the revenue is already spoken for before funding anything in the rest of the government!
  1. [deleted] · 1790828339 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]

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