Social Security Tax to go up

[Birdsnest]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,235903,00.html

[booyalab]

And unless you’re overly generous or naïve about the way the government is spending your money, you should be genuinely ticked off about this. SO true.

[Dom]

If I had a salary of over $94k I think I could afford a little generosity....

Jesus, the rich here have been paying 40% tax plus NI (12% I think) for years...

You guy do so get upset about your taxes don't you... I don't know all we wanted to do was build and maintain an army for your protection... and you decided to have a rebellion about it....

[dubbeltop]

Social Security Tax to go up

We call it 'Christmas tax' so...thats my view

http://imdb.com/title/tt0122264/plotsummary

[booyalab]

If I had a salary of over $94k I think I could afford a little generosity....

Jesus, the rich here have been paying 40% tax plus NI (12% I think) for years...

You guy do so get upset about your taxes don't you... I don't know all we wanted to do was build and maintain an army for your protection... and you decided to have a rebellion about it....

yeah, we were rebelling about protection. that's exactly correct :P (protection for England, right?)

Even if the term "generosity" wasn't a misnomer.....not just the financially comfortable fall into the rich category, there's also small businesses. The more you tax anyone with money to invest, the less likely they are to invest it. The less likely people are to invest, the worse for wear the economy will be.

[Dom]

yeah, we were rebelling about protection. that's exactly correct :P (protection for England, right?)

Even if the term "generosity" wasn't a misnomer.....not just the financially comfortable fall into the rich category, there's also small businesses. The more you tax anyone with money to invest, the less likely they are to invest it. The less likely people are to invest, the worse for wear the economy will be.


sure...

[geniusndisguise]

If I had a salary of over $94k I think I could afford a little generosity....

Generosity is when you hand it to those you think deserve it the most. When it's taken from you whether you want it to be or not, generosity has nothing to do with it.

[Dom]

Generosity is when you hand it to those you think deserve it the most. When it's taken from you whether you want it to be or not, generosity has nothing to do with it.

sure...

[omnirook]

If I had a salary of over $94k I think I could afford a little generosity....

Jesus, the rich here have been paying 40% tax plus NI (12% I think) for years...

You guy do so get upset about your taxes don't you... I don't know all we wanted to do was build and maintain an army for your protection... and you decided to have a rebellion about it....

Getting me started, are you?

There were other little complaints, too, such as the king's toll roads. Toll roads were so hated for so long that our government had to do all including bend over backwards to get us to swallow them once again. It wasn't easy. The promise was that the tolls would go away once the roads had been paid for. The public who believed that bullshit should have been shot for its stupidity. Once a toll goes in, it stays in - forever. Now not only are tolls commonplace, the tolls keep going up because raising tolls is a way of raising taxes w/o raising taxes! The toll to cross the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge was 10 cents when the Bridge was built. Due to the volume of cars crossing the bridge, the bridge was paid for long before the toll was raised to 25 cents. That first 15 cents increase was, of course, "temporary" - and it was! It's just that nobody said that the change would be in the upward direction. Now the toll is $4.50 - both ways ... We should not have tolls on our roads. We should not have the myriad of buried taxes that we have.

My certified public accountant introduced me to one of your chartered public accountants who was doing a tour of duty in the US to learn about US taxation. He had brought along his UK tax code books. They fit nicely on one shelf. He gasped when he saw the US tax code books - an entire room filled w/thick volumes.

Americans are so stupid as a nation of people that they expect their government to function w/o an income. To meet that insane demand, American politicians have developed some of the most bizzare ways of burying taxes so that the public will not see them. While I am waiting for my accountant - I have a habit of arriving very early for appointments - I sit in his firm's library, looking at the tax codes. Astounding! Do you know that there is a "service tax" on the action of handing a patron his theatre ticket? The act of handing the ticket to its purchaser is taxed!

The top tax rate right now is about 28% - which is nonsense. That accounts for only direct taxes. When one takes all the other taxes into account - the ones that the dopey public remain oblivious to - the fact is that the average American is paying out nearly 50% of his income in taxes. Our accountants talk about "tax liberation day" - meaning the day when a person would start earning money if he paid all his taxes up front, instead of incrementally throughout the year. "Tax liberation day" comes in May now. So, the first 5 months of a person's income goes to tax - and that does not include irregular taxes and the ever increasing "fines" that jurisdictions are forced to impose to make up their budget gaps.

And this is all childishness. No one wants to see any real cut in the government or the services that it provides. Oh, yeah, a handful of loonies on the right wing - but, take a look at them, and one quickly sees that they are all young and healthy and not in need of many of the government's services - yet. That is why nothing ever gets cut. The public would not sit still for it. So, the government is left w/no choice but to bury taxes and hide them and distract the public from noticing them. Tolls and "sin taxes" - the latest favorites for a government that is not allowed to tax the people who should be taxed the most, the rich. They're the ones who benefit the most, but they want to pay the least.

"Taxes are for the little people" - Leona Helmsley, multibillionaire.

Americans are willing to do anything for their country - except give it the money that it needs to function. This insanity has led to the mess that we have now.

[C.J.Woolf]

I read recently that Bush is going to try one more time to fuck privatize Social Security. The article appears to be one of the first salvos in the new PR offensive, this time aimed directly at the Democrats.

[Dom]

Getting me started, are you?
[...]

Word.

[FranG]

yeah, we were rebelling about protection. that's exactly correct :P (protection for England, right?)

Even if the term "generosity" wasn't a misnomer.....not just the financially comfortable fall into the rich category, there's also small businesses. The more you tax anyone with money to invest, the less likely they are to invest it. The less likely people are to invest, the worse for wear the economy will be.

I love your posts; you never fail to amaze. Yeah I don't want the government taking shit from me. But I do understand that the government needs money to operate. But they mismanage our funds religously.

Note: they really don't mismanage anything; they operate under the guise of mismanagement to keep an ignorant public off their asses. They literally steal from us. They have plenty of money to do plenty of things, you can find the money in the pockets of the bankers and their political puppets.

edit//

Oh for the record, the Bank of England still owns this country. We never got free. Just wanted to throw that in for the record :D


Getting me started, are you?

There were other little complaints, too, such as the king's toll roads. Toll roads were so hated for so long that our government had to do all including bend over backwards to get us to swallow them once again. It wasn't easy. The promise was that the tolls would go away once the roads had been paid for. The public who believed that bullshit should have been shot for its stupidity. Once a toll goes in, it stays in - forever. Now not only are tolls commonplace, the tolls keep going up because raising tolls is a way of raising taxes w/o raising taxes! The toll to cross the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge was 10 cents when the Bridge was built. Due to the volume of cars crossing the bridge, the bridge was paid for long before the toll was raised to 25 cents. That first 15 cents increase was, of course, "temporary" - and it was! It's just that nobody said that the change would be in the upward direction. Now the toll is $4.50 - both ways ... We should not have tolls on our roads. We should not have the myriad of buried taxes that we have.

Americans are so stupid as a nation of people that they expect their government to function w/o an income. To meet that insane demand, American politicians have developed some of the most bizzare ways of burying taxes so that the public will not see them. While I am waiting for my accountant - I have a habit of arriving very early for appointments - I sit in his firm's library, looking at the tax codes. Astounding! Do you know that there is a "service tax" on the action of handing a patron his theatre ticket? The act of handing the ticket to its purchaser is taxed!

The top tax rate right now is about 28% - which is nonsense. That accounts for only direct taxes. When one takes all the other taxes into account - the ones that the dopey public remain oblivious to - the fact is that the average American is paying out nearly 50% of his income in taxes. Our accountants talk about "tax liberation day" - meaning the day when a person would start earning money if he paid all his taxes up front, instead of incrementally throughout the year. "Tax liberation day" comes in May now. So, the first 5 months of a person's income goes to tax - and that does not include irregular taxes and the ever increasing "fines" that jurisdictions are forced to impose to make up their budget gaps.

And this is all childishness. No one wants to see any real cut in the government or the services that it provides. Oh, yeah, a handful of loonies on the right wing - but, take a look at them, and one quickly sees that they are all young and healthy and not in need of many of the government's services - yet. That is why nothing ever gets cut. The public would not sit still for it. So, the government is left w/no choice but to bury taxes and hide them and distract the public from noticing them. Tolls and "sin taxes" - the latest favorites for a government that is not allowed to tax the people who should be taxed the most, the rich. They're the ones who benefit the most, but they want to pay the least.

"Taxes are for the little people" - Leona Helmsley, multibillionaire.

Americans are willing to do anything for their country - except give it the money that it need to function. This insanity has led to the mess that we have now.

Omnirook I always enjoy reading your posts too. Always insightful. And that toll road phenomenon is happening all over the country. In Chicago, they recently privatized a toll road (the Chicago Skyway). Our politicians sold us out for (I forget the dollar amount) for a king's ransom. So they'll just misappropriate (on purpose) the newly acquired funds into their pockets. And the corporations never have mercy on anyone (as evidenced in their charters classifying themselves as for-profit entities). The price of the toll increased from $2 to $2.50 for cars. And tolls on other state roads in Illinois went up by like 25-50%. They be raping us.

[omnirook]

I love your posts; you never fail to amaze. Yeah I don't want the government taking shit from me. But I do understand that the government needs money to operate. But they mismanage our funds religously.

Note: they really don't mismanage anything; they operate under the guise of mismanagement to keep an ignorant public off their asses. They literally steal from us. They have plenty of money to do plenty of things, you can find the money in the pockets of the bankers and their political puppets.

edit//

Oh for the record, the Bank of England still owns this country. We never got free. Just wanted to throw that in for the record :D



Omnirook I always enjoy reading your posts too. Always insightful. And that toll road phenomenon is happening all over the country. In Chicago, they recently privatized a toll road (the Chicago Skyway). Our politicians sold us out for (I forget the dollar amount) for a king's ransom. So they'll just misappropriate (on purpose) the newly acquired funds into their pockets. And the corporations never have mercy on anyone (as evidenced in their charters classifying themselves as for-profit entities). The price of the toll increased from $2 to $2.50 for cars. And tolls on other state roads in Illinois went up by like 25-50%. They be raping us.

George III collected his tolls via - private companies that gave the king a cut of the profit. "Tax farming" was the term used - letting a private company do the work of collecting the tax, giving the government a cut of the take, and keeping the rest for itself. Of course, the government had the intial investment of building the road to make, so the private company was not really laying out a thing, just making money. This granting of "monopolies" was so hated by the British themselves that they eventually put an end to it. Now we're going back to doing what our ancestors despised w/a passion. And nobody cares! The very idea of handing out the right to make money w/o having to invest a dime - makes me sick! It's cronyism at its worst. Dubya has done it w/the military - firms are making millions cooking and cleaning for the troops. The companies don't supply the food, the kitchens, nothing - just a few low-wage slobs to do the cooking. Meanwhile, they collect hundreds of millions. The military always did its own cooking - and the cost was - the food itself. Now we pay for the food - and to have it cooked by "private contractors." Crazy! - the private contractors are all pals of pals, cronies, and the contracts were got through Cheney's system of "no bid" - in other words, "In this time of emergency, we do not have the time to allow for a bidding process, so the Vice President naturally feels comfortable going w/people whom he knows" - and that was swallowed! Unbelievable.

[ptGatsby]

The more you tax anyone with money to invest, the less likely they are to invest it. The less likely people are to invest, the worse for wear the economy will be.


As much as I find this hillarious (the original story, that is... Canada is still available for yall!)...

Money distribution doesn't really matter. This is about stability. They take money from people who won't revolt (the rich, 94,000 income is certainly high enough) to those that would (subsidise the poor).

Look at it this way; social security will fail. You do not have enough money as it currently stands. How do you solve it? From a pragmatic point of view, this is a good solution. Stupid situation, but a good solution.

[omnirook]

As much as I find this hillarious (the original story, that is... Canada is still available for yall!)...

Money distribution doesn't really matter. This is about stability. They take money from people who won't revolt (the rich, 94,000 income is certainly high enough) to those that would (subsidise the poor).

Look at it this way; social security will fail. You do not have enough money as it currently stands. How do you solve it? From a pragmatic point of view, this is a good solution. Stupid situation, but a good solution.

Social Security is solvent for quite some time to come. The main reason that SS is threatened: the government keeps raiding its coffers to make up for defecits due to income not meeting expense ...

Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia - all countries w/high tax rates - yet people keep investing. The bugaboo about people not investing because they are heavily taxed is just that - a phantom.

They all like to point to the 1950's as the glory days for America - and, in some ways, for a good part of the population, they were the glory days - but, back then, the top tax rate was 78%. Ike's Administration taxed the rich w/o mercy - w/o mercy - and, yet, the economy was booming, booming, booming, so that nobody could even conceive of a slowdown - even working class people had money in the bank and owned their own homes.

When Ike left the White House, he left doing what few American presidents ever did: he left the country in the black, no debts, plenty of money socked away to pay for emergencies. He followed Truman's example: don't spend unless you have the money to spend. The problem that the upper crust had in America was that their workers were employees, not slaves, employees who had rights and who made enough money to keep out of grinding debt. Employees had to be treated well - or they would leave and go elsewhere. Can't have that.

The process of bankrupting the government, of burying the public in debt, of lifting taxes from the rich was begun. It reached a crescendo under Reagan, who got the American people to go along w/the trickle-down fantasy that said that the rich would be kind to the poor if the rich didn't have the horrible burden of paying their fair share of taxes. And it worked!

People bought into it because the very process of destroying the economy generated illusions of prosperity. All of a sudden, Americans had easy credit and plenty of cheaply made, low-quality crap to buy, crap flooding in from all over the world because the US was exporting the manufacture of goods. When Ike left the White House, the US was the largest creditor nation in the world, and the whole world bought US made goods. Now, the US is the largest debtor nation in the world - and there is very little that is manufactured here any more. But, that's ok according to the neocons. We should not worry.

And the neocons appeared to be right for awhile - the US floated forward on its fantasy of white-collared world hegemony because it had the service jobs left. But, now, those, too, are going overseas in droves. Nowadays even the lawyers are threatened: Phillipino students take American law courses in the Phillipines, fly over to the US at corporate expense to pass the bar exam, and fly home to take over all the bread and butter work of US law firms, especially the writing of contracts.

The top tenth of one percent got geometrically richer - before Reagan, a millionaire was a somebody, now a billionaire might still be a nobody - and fuck the rest of us. We're scum, anyway, suffer and die, you pigs!

People worry about immigrants - and I never used to - but, now, the immigrants who are coming here - except for the poor from Latin America - are coming here not to become Americans but to get in on picking the nation's corpse clean before going home to build houses and live like Tsars. I know one fucking guy from India that comes to NY twice/year - why? To collect the rent money for the 100 taxi medallions he owns. 100 times 1000/week = 100,000 per week - and no taxes on it. That's 5 million/year. No taxes.

Now a lot of people will say that Americans are getting their just deserts because that was the kind of shit that Americans did to other people. And that is partly true. Trouble is, the average American slob was never aware of any of that, actually believed that his country stood for decency, and would never have sat still for such economic carnage had he known - the American people have always stood for fair play - that was why the Civil Rights movement worked: when even southerners saw what was going on, how ugly it was, they changed their minds. My one hope is that the people of the world can differentiate between the American people and the piratical American elite!

[ptGatsby]

Social Security is solvent for quite some time to come. The main reason that SS is threatened: the government keeps raiding its coffers to make up for defecits due to income not meeting expense ...


Not that solvent... by 2020, it will using secured bonds to cover it's obligations, and by 2040 or so, have exhausted it's surplus.

All of this is regardless of the age increases, the restructuring, assuming full surplus is allocated to the fund, normal growth, and controlled inflation. And all of that is ignoring that the funds are paper only; the money still have to be raised to pay for the fund, normally though other taxation means.



Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia - all countries w/high tax rates - yet people keep investing. The bugaboo about people not investing because they are heavily taxed is just that - a phantom.


Foreign investment and taxation is directly correlated... The lower the taxes, the more foreign investment you get.

Most places, all of those that you named, require you to invest pensions and the like within the country; the smaller individual investors rarely can stomach currency movements (and the legal implications involved), nevermind that taxation normally favors (at least in Canada and Australia) local investment.

Investment is dependent on what their is to invest in. Lower taxes encourage more investment all around.



They all like to point to the 1950's as the glory days for America - and, in some ways, for a good part of the population, they were the glory days - but, back then, the top tax rate was 78%. Ike's Administration taxed the rich w/o mercy - w/o mercy - and, yet, the economy was booming, booming, booming, so that nobody could even conceive of a slowdown - even working class people had money in the bank and owned their own homes.


Yup. I'm not exactly against taxes; its the spending I'm against.



The top tenth of one percent got geometrically richer - before Reagan, a millionaire was a somebody, now a billionaire might still be a nobody - and fuck the rest of us. We're scum, anyway, suffer and die, you pigs!


This mostly has to do with the credit structure that exists now. But... all theatrics aside, you are essentially correct.



Now a lot of people will say that Americans are getting their just deserts because that was the kind of shit that Americans did to other people.


Maybe. I think you get what you perpetuate. If you want your credit cards, easy money, inflate away your debts and large trade imbalances, you get what you started.

[meshou]

We could probably fix SS for the cost of a small war. But no, we need that money for wars.

Republicans: The party of small government.*







*unless you count the executive branch. Then they're for huge fucking huking government.