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I'm not sure I understand the argument that fees for trucks would be bad because they increase the cost of purchasing things... so we should have a sales tax instead. At least if the cost increase came from trucking fees, it would allow consumers to make purchasing decisions to avoid those fees by buying goods that didn't require trucks (and thus provide private free market encouragement not to destroy the interstates).
LOL.
Look around you at this very moment. Everything. Everything you see around you more than likely spent some part of it's life on the back of a truck.
Unless, you're Amish, a hippy, or a mountain man... living off the land with clothes you made, food you grew, and a house you built from materials harvest from that very land. Or, you're outside in some park with natural trees and grass.
Should we all live like that? I don't know. Perhaps. But, we don't, so... trucks are needed unless you want a bunch of volunteer Prius's to haul goods from rail yards to Trader Joe's. Maybe they could convoy.
Last edited by northbound74; 05-25-2014 at 08:26 AM..
Are you sure about that? A customer paying with EBT (food stamps) will have the balance printed on their receipt. I was nosey a few times and recall seeing over $1000 on one customer's balance.
Either they weren't using the food stamps, or were getting a lot more than $50 per person.
At that time, I was making less than 10,000 per year. Of course, I got all of the income tax back, but I was still paying FICA.
I don't care if the taxes I pay go to help people in need. However, I feel used when these people abuse it. Crablegs and a $40 cake? Why can't they buy something cheaper? Being on food stamps means you don't even have enough to feed yourself or your family, something that even wild animals can do. You shouldn't be eating expensive foods.
These same people would use the cash back option on their food stamps to pay for booze, cigarettes, and other toiletries. I called the state asking about the legality of this and they stated that people are rarely punished.
Let's just do the math. According to Food and Nutrition Service, in 2013 47mil Americans were on food stamps. This cost the government $76bil in benefits. That works out to $4.43 per person day.
Now, how many dollars and people are legitimate, and how much is fraud? Don't post anecdotes, post facts.
I thought about it some more and your requirement to have *no* workers in a household in order for you to think that unemployment is the main cause of lack of taxation is still not correct. Able-bodied adults of working age in the U.S. are all expected to work and the tax code is set up to tax two-worker households much more heavily than one where only one person works due to how exemptions and deductions work. That exemption policy works in reverse too- if you have another nonworking person in your house and you work, you have more exemptions and have a lower AGI than if that person were not there. So the unemployed person reduces the taxes paid by the person who works. Thus the number of unemployed individuals is still highly related to the number of tax returns with no federal taxes being paid.
The total exemption for a married couple is $20,000. The EIC for a married couple also phases out completely at $20,000, so EIC is not a factor. Even if one spouse is unemployed and the other is working full-time, the working spouse has to be earning less than $9.62/hr to end up paying no income tax. Think about how ridiculously little that is; and that is how little you have to earn to end up paying no income tax. Each of those exemptions for dependents adds another $3.9k. First one gets us up to $11.49/hr. Next one $13.37/hr. Finally, at a married couple with three dependents do you reach $15.24/hr or less to pay no taxes.
But the reality is that median annual compensation for SSA credit earning workers in the US is $27,519.10. That's it. Just the equivalent of $13.23/hr.
And that puts a four person household into no income tax.
The total exemption for a married couple is $20,000. The EIC for a married couple also phases out completely at $20,000, so EIC is not a factor. Even if one spouse is unemployed and the other is working full-time, the working spouse has to be earning less than $9.62/hr to end up paying no income tax. Think about how ridiculously little that is; and that is how little you have to earn to end up paying no income tax. Each of those exemptions for dependents adds another $3.9k. First one gets us up to $11.49/hr. Next one $13.37/hr. Finally, at a married couple with three dependents do you reach $15.24/hr or less to pay no taxes.
But the reality is that median annual compensation for SSA credit earning workers in the US is $27,519.10. That's it. Just the equivalent of $13.23/hr.
And that puts a four person household into no income tax.
You are very conspicuously not mentioning tax credits and other common deductions in your scenario. Tax credits in particular have a huge impact on the amount of taxes people pay, significantly more than deductions, because they are treated equivalently to taxes paid. The people in your scenario would be getting a $1000 tax credit for each dependent child, which at the lowest 10% bracket is equivalent to a $10,000 deduction. Your example of a three-person one-earner family with one child earning $11.49/hr and working full time (2000 hrs/year, $22980 gross income) would actually end up getting about $2,300 in extra money back in addition to all of their money that was withheld due to EITC and the child tax credit. A similar situation with the median income of $27519.10 would get about $900 extra back due to the credits. You would have to gross just a fuzz over $30,000 a year in such a situation in order to actually pay any federal income taxes. That works out to a $15/hour wage.
A four-person household with two dependent children would need to earn more than $38,000 a year to pay any federal income tax, which is $19/hour. A five-person household with three dependent children would need to earn more than $43,500 to pay any tax, which would be $21.75/hour.
Also this is completely ignoring any other tax credits and deductions (such as the home mortgage interest deduction) and only discussing the child tax credit and EITC. Now you see how many people in one-earner, more than one person households pay little to no taxes.
Yes, I did not include credits because I was using the worst case scenario (figuring that you would complain that not everyone can claim those credits so they should not be factored in for showing how much you have to earn to pay taxes) to have as low a level as possible and show just how close that was to the median.
The fact that a family of four can be earning $43.5k a year and still not pay taxes only further demonstrates that it is low wages, not unemployment, that leads to people not paying taxes.
The problem is that people are paid too little, not that they are not working.
Yes, I did not include credits because I was using the worst case scenario (figuring that you would complain that not everyone can claim those credits so they should not be factored in for showing how much you have to earn to pay taxes) to have as low a level as possible and show just how close that was to the median.
The fact that a family of four can be earning $43.5k a year and still not pay taxes only further demonstrates that it is low wages, not unemployment, that leads to people not paying taxes.
The problem is that people are paid too little, not that they are not working.
$43,500 a year or $21.75/hour is NOT a particularly low salary, at least not in a place with a sane cost of living like MO. That's $3265 a month, or $1673 every two weeks you can make without paying a cent of federal income tax. The average annual household income in MO is about $47,000. The U.S. annual median household income as a whole is about $52,000.
Go back and look at your Census Bureau figures. They show that for a four-person family, 15,767,620 out of 26,525,545 such families had more than one worker. That's only 59% of the total number of such households. In fact, 7% of those households had NOBODY working. These figures are highly unlikely to contain retirees as few retirees have 2-3 dependents living with them. Those figures also mesh very well with the official figures of a 56.5% overall employment rate and the 67.9% working-age employment rate I figured previously.
So it really is people not working largely contributing to the fact that nearly half of households don't pay taxes, not low wages. Secondarily it is the bar for taxation starting at a fairly high level as well ($43,500 for a married family of four) contributing as well. That's exactly what I had been saying all along.
As a right-leaning person, I find Texas to be rather ridiculous when it comes to infrastructure and zoning. The most poorly executed road system out there, I think. Their state roads are a cruel joke.
For whatever reason, it has become the poster child for conservative politics, but not all of us like it and some find it to be a bit of an embarrassment when it comes to stuff like this.
I think toll roads are good for the most part as long as they're part of a good, cohesive system. I also like it when they share something like E-ZPass/Prepass to streamline interstate travel and commerce. Texas and Oklahoma do their own thing, which makes it more... annoying.
I do see tolls as a viable funding option for interstates and main thoroughfares like 13/7 in Missouri.
MO has pretty good roads, comparatively speaking. MODot does a very good at building roads quickly and keeping them maintained pretty well. Do they need more money? If so, then a little bit more of a gas tax or tolls seem like the way to go. Let the people who use them most pay for them.
I agree with the majority of your post. Yes I also do believe that MODot does a MUCH better job of building new roads and maintaining existing roads than states such as Texas. In fact, I think TXDOT is so far behind the times that it will never catch up to modern infrastructure demand.
Although, for the most part, I am against toll roads, I would support making the highway 13/7 corridor a toll road. I think that ONE toll road in each heavily populated state in this country (i.e. a state with 4 million or more residents) would be appropriate. Just look at states like Kansas. Kansas has just one toll road and a good chunk of the proceeds from the Kansas Turnpike go the funding of new roads and maintenance of existing roads throughout the state.
If Missouri ever makes a route a toll route, I should definitely be the 13/7 corridor and NOT the economically vital I-70 corridor between St. Louis and Kansas City.
Kansas has just one toll road and a good chunk of the proceeds from the Kansas Turnpike go the funding of new roads and maintenance of existing roads throughout the state.
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NOT true. Kansas turnpike tolls are used only for turnpike maintenance and to repay bonds issued to build it. Conversely, tolls are the ONLY revenue source for the KTA. They receive no other money from the State.
Let's just do the math. According to Food and Nutrition Service, in 2013 47mil Americans were on food stamps. This cost the government $76bil in benefits. That works out to $4.43 per person day.
Now, how many dollars and people are legitimate, and how much is fraud? Don't post anecdotes, post facts.
This data lists the maximum allowed amount per month. One person can get up to $189 per month. I could easily see how a family of four or more could have over $1000 on their card, especially since food stamps roll over and do not expire.
The program is designed to be a supplement (it's in the name) and not designed to pay for someone's groceries on a monthly basis like it currently does.
I spend about $200 per month on groceries for my wife and I. We don't buy expensive steaks, but we also don't buy cheap food.
NOT true. Kansas turnpike tolls are used only for turnpike maintenance and to repay bonds issued to build it. Conversely, tolls are the ONLY revenue source for the KTA. They receive no other money from the State.
Really? If that is true, then how does the state of Kansas have such good roads throughout the state and how is the state able to build the new roads that it has during the past decade (i.e. new freeways in the Northeast part of the state near Manhattan and Lawrence to Ottawa)?
I do know that gas is higher in Kansas than it is in MO. (for the most part), but even in that case, I don't believe that higher gas prices alone are the reason Kansas has such good roads.
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