The US Would be Running Budget Surpluses if it Were all White
THE US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT does not keep statistics on taxes paid by race. But, they keep statistics on income brackets by race, and an organization called “The Citizens for Tax Justice” calculates the proportion of ALL taxes (federal, state and local) paid by each income bracket.
And so using this data we can see that Non-Hispanic Whites paid 75.86% of the taxes despite being only 62.1% of the population.
1. Whites paid at least 75.86% of all taxes in 2014
Bracket | % of Whites in bracket | % of all taxes bracket pays | % of taxes paid by White-in-bracket |
Top 5% | 80.87 | 38.9 | 31.46 |
6-20% | 77.72 | 25.4 | 19.74 |
21-40% | 73.65 | 18.3 | 13.48 |
41-60% | 68.3 | 9.9 | 6.76 |
61-80% | 63.01 | 5.1 | 3.21 |
81-100% | 57.41 | 2.1 | 1.21 |
Percent of whites in each tax bracket is available here.
Percent of total taxes (state, federal and local) paid by each bracket is available here.
And so with simple multiplication, we can roughly infer how much whites pay in taxes.
This is almost certainly an underestimate because of scaling. I.e. the whites who earn more money within each bracket is not captured. If this were broken down by each percentage point, more of the variation would be captured, and we would see that whites pay even more.
2. Whites use 64.9% to 69.8% of all Government
Whites use 64.9% or 69.8% of US Government depending on how you treat military spending. For entitlement usage by race, there is easily accessible data on this. For non-entitlement spending (roads, schools, courts, cops, military) I assumed each race got equal usage per capita, and so I call it “Equal Government”.
And so whites, being 62.1% of the population, are assigned 62.1% of the use in this.
For calculating the budget surplus in a hypothetical all-white United States, in one I scaled down military spending to the US White population (62.1% in 2014), and in another, “(Static Military)” I kept the spending at 2014 levels.
Gov’t Category | $ Spent (billions) | White Use % | White Use $ | White Tax Payment |
“Equal Government” | 3,482 | 62.1 | 2162.32 | |
Social Security | 1,262 | 84.07 | 1060.96 | |
Medicare | 505 | 76.02 | 383.90 | |
Medicaid | 476 | 48.7 | 231.81 | |
Welfare | 472 | 38.8 | 183.14 | |
Total | 6,197 | 64.9 | 4022.13 | 4,529.52 |
(Static Military) | 6,197 | 69.8 | 4326.13 | 4,529.52 |
White use of social security is available here
White use of medicare is available here
White use of medicaid is available here
White use of welfare is available here
Total US Government Spending at all levels in 2014 is available here
Total US Government Revenue of all types and at all levels in 2014 is available here
And so based on this, whites only consumed $4,022.13 billion in government, but paid $4,529.52 billion in taxes assuming a scaled-down military. Assuming a military of the same size, whites consumed $4,326.13 billion.
Money spent aggregates State, Federal and Local spending (which is why Medicaid is almost as much as Medicare). “Equal Government” includes everything else, including military spending and interest on the national debt.
Static Military is a calculation that doesn’t reduce military spending in this hypothetical white-only nation, which in 2014 meant keeping it at $801.1 billion. So a white-only US would probably be able to maintain current US military spending and run a budget surplus.
That said, the ultimate takeaway is that US budget deficits are entirely a function of non-whites. And that is NOT hypothetical, even after assigning 100% of the military budget to whites.
Depending on how you treat military spending, whites pay $507.39 billion more in taxes than they get in government, or $203.39 billion more if we assign all military consumption to whites.
3. Regionality
One counter to this would be that whites benefit from having non-whites around.
The problem is that, whatever the proposed mechanism by which whites benefit from having non-whites around, it doesn’t seem to play out by region:
Region | % White | Median Income of White Males | Median Income of White Females |
Northeast | 67.6 | $40,435 | $25,090 |
Midwest | 77.2 | $36,892 | $22,803 |
South | 59.0 | $37,666 | $22,199 |
West | 50.9 | $41,366 | $23,140 |
White percentage data is avialable here
Income data is avialable here
Using the numbers from 2012 in both.
If there is any kind of causal relation, it’s certainly not a very strong one, and it’s not consistent. Maybe whites in the West benefit from the large hispanic population, but the fact that whites in the Northeast make a lot more money than whites in the South suggest that other factors are far more important.
And much of the higher incomes of whites in the West, who live mostly in California, Oregon and Washington, are offset by higher costs of living than in the Midwest or South.
4. The Cost of Non-Whites
Perhaps in the future I will break down the cost of non-whites by each racial group, as non-whites does include East Asians and Indians, who are probably even bigger net tax payers than whites.
But for now, we can calculate the cost of non-whites with both the static military and scaled-down military assumption:
For the “static military” assumption where non-whites are associated with zero increase in military spending, non-whites on net create a $430.09 billion deficit (remember this includes both state and federal), or $3,558.58 per capita.
For the “scaled military” assumption where non-whites are associated with an increase in military spending in proportion with their population increase, non-whites on net create a $733.75 billion deficit, or $6,071.07 per capita.
4. Conclusion
Obviously just instantaneously removing all non-whites from the United States would cause massive dislocation today since they are so embedded in the US economy. However, if they never were in the US economy, there is no reason to believe the median incomes of US whites would be lower.
One counter to this could be that Europe is mostly white, and those countries still run massive deficits. The purpose of this article is not to say that an all-white population guarantees budget surpluses, but that the United States, as it is currently constituted, would be running budget surpluses if it were all white.
Moreover, back when the US had fewer non-whites as a proportion of the population, it’s not like whites in the US were all socialists and running big deficits.
And thus from a financial standpoint, the US would be far better off, and the “national debt” and “deficit” is almost entirely a function of non-whites.
Sources
White Medicare beneficiaries
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2012/128.pdf
White Social Security beneficiaries
http://kff.org/report-section/income-and-assets-of-medicare-beneficiaries-2014-2030-tables/
White Medicaid recipients
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2014/118.pdf
Total Medicaid Spending
http://kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/total-medicaid-spending/
Total Medicare Spending
http://www.futureofmedicare.org/content/reports-and-resources/congressional-budget-office-2015-long-term-budget-outlook
Total US Government Spending at all levels 2014
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2014USbt_17bs2n#usgs302
Total US Government Revenue of all types and at all levels 2014
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/piechart_2014_US_total
2014 income distribution of Whites, alone, not hispanic
https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032014/hhinc/hinc05R.xls
2014 “Who pays taxes”
http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2014.pdf
2014 US Federal Budget
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_United_States_federal_budget
US Non-Hispanic Whites in 2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Hispanic_whites#Population_by_state_or_territory
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Source: The Alternative Right
That site is now defunct, but the content is at a newer and more permanent site: http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/the-us-would-be-running-budget-surpluses-if-it-were-all-white/