Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you eliminated the cap on their contributions(mind you it's well below the 1%ers at 118,500) are you also going to uncap the benefits? There currently is a maximum benefit
The wage cap and benefit cap are two different questions. They are independent of each other. One option that has been discussed for "shoring up" Social Security funding has been to raise the SS wage cap to around $180K, paying benefits due on all increased contributions. When the cap was last raised in 1983, some 90% of all wages fell under the tax. With upward income redistribution since, the number has fallen below 83%. The change as proposed would move us back toward 90% while providing a 25-30 year extension to the projected life of the SS Trust Fund, during which time we could take another look and decide what if anything else needed to be done. Another option would be to eliminate the SS wage cap altogether (the cap for Medicare was done away with years ago), also paying benefits on all increased contributions. That would very nearly put the system into permanent actuarial balance, even using the pessimistic assumptions that the SS Trustees use. This latter state could of course be reached much more easily if the wage cap were to be raised while the benefits cap left was either left where it is or increased on less than a dollar-for-dollar basis.
Last edited by Major Barbara; 05-10-2015 at 06:17 AM..
What I do have issue with are those who do not earn income from honest means, which is to say those people who do not produce value for others in the private sector by means of hard work, initiative, ingenuity etc. (or a combination thereof).
Do you know what the weather forecast is for today? Do you think the folks down at your local radio or TV station are figuring that out for you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mapmd
I'm against the way our monetary system has been run through the "federal" "reserve".
LOL! There are very good reasons why every economy in the world either has or makes use of a central bank and why none of them is on a gold standard. "Old ideas" people really need to get out more, enjoy the sunshine, and bring themselves up to date.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mapmd
I'm against lobbyists of all kind who merely advocate for more big-industry and big-banking against the best interests of the vast majority of Americans.
People who disagree with you should not have a voice, I guess.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mapmd
government is best served at the local level where it is most accountable to the people and can be run efficiently. I'm wholly against the one-size-fits-all approach that big-federal advocates like to take.
The local government level is packed with ignorance and corruption. It is the equivalent of rookie league baseball.
[quote=rruff;39548455]SS never made any "sense". It was a scheme for giving welfare money to old people while calling it something else.
/quote]
Laughable. SS is the most popular and successful social insurance plan in world history. It operates as any insurance program does -- current benefits are paid out of current premiums, with residuals being salted away as reserves against future claims.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
From now on the benefits should be expected to roughly match payments during your life on average.
You are flipping back and foirth between real and nominal dolarrs. Pick one and stick with it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
If I had my way, we'd phase it out and go to a UBI for everyone.
One good reason not to let you have your way. There are of course many others.
The trick is to increase the taxes the wealthy pay without prompting them to move or decide to work less and reduce their income.
Wealthy people do not hop from state to state or country to country on account of a few cents worth of tax-rate differences at the margin. Nor do they throttle their "work levels" up or down on such a basis. These are idiot-level myths developed by propagandists -- that is, special interest people who have been hired to lobby YOU.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tall Traveler
One pet peeve I do have is the long reach of the IRS. We have to pay US taxes no matter where we earn it.
If you incur foreign taxation, there are credits for it against your US taxes. Otherwise, US citizens live and work all over the globe. We are the world's largest economic entity after all. Why should you be able to escape taxes simply because you have been temporarily transferred by yourself or by your employer to the other side of some border or other?
I can't tell you how many family businesses I know that have closed up...
I can. It's none. At least none that closed up for any among the variety of reasons you suggest. Not everyone is suited to being a "businessman". Some choose to learn that the hard way. That's on them, not the rest of us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultrarunner
Another woman married a German citizen when she was stationed in Germany 24 years ago... her German Bank closed her bank account because she was a US Citizen and she and her German husband had to file US tax returns with no ties to the U.S. other than her citizenship... they have 3 kids that are German... it got to point where she was glad to let it go.
And I have in-laws who moved here form Germany to avoid all that. They lasted 18 months, then packed up and went back home. Massaged and cherry-picked sob stories are nothing worthy of note.
Do you understand the concept of means and ends? Or do you simply believe that the ends justify any means?
To answer your question: we should have only the minimum amount of government necessary to protect American citizens from external threats.
I asked you a simple question and you failed to reply. Actually, you don't need too because you've said earlier that taxes are extortion. If, as you say, taxes are truly extortion it doesn't matter what they are used for because, logically, they are still a crime and shouldn't be allowed. The only philosophy consistent with your reasoning is anarchy, or no government at all.
Actually, the fallacy in your reasoning is large. Extortion doesn't apply to acts committed by a government that exists by popular will. In the USA, we have a government that is elected by the people. If our public officials commit acts that a majority of Americans disagree with than those public officials can be voted out of office. We can take this a step further. We also have a Bill of Rights which grants minorities in this country certain baseline rights. Under our system, the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of what this document means. If the people disagree with a certain interpretation of any part of the Constitution or Bill of Rights than they can follow a prescribed process and amend the law. There is an entire series of checks and balances in our system that furnish some protection to minorities.
What I am describing above is a social contract that exists between every individual and the state. People who are bound by a contract to pay money are not the victims of extortion. Likewise, those bound by the social contract with the state are not victims of extortion either, when called upon to pay their share of taxes that are set by Congress and by local governments. Its really a pretty simple concept, but one that many libertarians can't get through their heads.
What this argument really comes down to is simple. Our elected representatives made choices you don't like. They have chosen a larger government than you personally prefer. They have chosen to tax wealthier groups more money than other groups, primarily because (as I said in an earlier post) there is no other practical way to finance the type of government that is necessary to run a modern state.
What makes libertarians come across as crackpots is when they fail to acknowledge something very simple. We held an election, or elections, and the people holding their position lost.
In order to be taken seriously, you are going to have win and election or two. I'm not holding my breath.
Comparative advantage only works when countries are able to acheive overall approx trade parity.
No, it works all the time. Problems may seem to arise for the narrow-sighted who see jobs being lost to trade, but never see jobs being gained from trade. The former of course tend to occur at the sort of larger levels that media bozos can detect and get all sappy about, while the latter tend to occur in large numbers of one's and two's that never draw the attention of anyone not actually paying attention. There have been net increases in the numbers of trade-dependent jobs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
No problem losing labor intensive industries to China, but we need to replace it with something we can export... ie something we have a comparative advantage in. Instead we've let our economy deteriorate and accumulated debt to compensate.
US exports are at record levels. We are 5% of the world's population, but produce 22% of its GDP. 13-14% of that output is currently sent abroad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
The countries who have behaved like the US have experienced declining living standards and high debt. The ones tied to the Euro are in serious trouble. The only country I know of that has gotten away with it is Australia, because they've been able to attract a lot of foreign capital investment in their mining, primarily.
Short-term yada-yada. High foreign investment = high debt.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
Never used credit for anything except a home purchase.
Why not tell me you've shot yourself in the foot as well? Credit is a tool. Failure to adopt and use tools is an example of primitive behavior.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
Meaningless to US consumers. Try this one:
Really? How would that help support a claim that "...our debt load has eased somewhat since 2008...?
What normally happens is D's get into power and screw things up, then the people vote republicans to pick up the pieces and they get blamed.
Hahahaha! Harding/Coolidge = two recessions. Hoover = one Great Depresssion. Eisenhower = three recessions. Nixon/Ford = two recessions. Reagan/Bush-41 = two recessions. Bush-43 = two recessions. These are the mess-makers. The party opposite are the cleaner-uppers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by petch751
Hey I heard that even though Baltimore has been run by democrats / liberals for a long time they are blaming republicans.
Virtually all cities tend to be run by Democrats simply because non-RINO Republicans have no clue as to how to do it. The idea of more than one person simply boggles their minds. They may or may not be any good at running tiny little towns somewhere in Idaho, but actual cities are simply not to be left in Republican hands.
The goose laying the golden eggs would be killed in no time. Ever wonder why Europe is not doing as well as the Americas? Because first the royals and then the "socialists" (really royal old wine in new bottles) taxed the productive class. That created a massive brain drain. Guess where their smartest people with the most initiative went? And some went with money as well. Robin Hood policies work in fiction, not in the real world.
Recent struggles in Europe have come about because they mistakenly got swept up into an errant thesis that austerity was good for growth. The underpinnings of that thesis have now been knocked down, but the right tend to be slow-learners and late-adapters. See "social insurance", "central banking", and "fiat currency" for other examples.
Punish the 1%? Why not? They punished all the rest of us with their market manipulation and monopoly pricing.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
