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"Investing" now because the rates are low is about as smart as buying a house you can only afford with a short-term ARM mortgage rate. A large part of the housing crisis was attributed to the reset of ARM's.
OP, if you find it hard to find a job you should re-think your political position. Obama just hasn't delivered. We spent about a trillion dollars in borrowed money on a "stimulus" that was supposed to keep unemployment under 8% -- and got unemployment above 8% for almost every month of Obama's first term presidency. Much of that money seems to have gone to ill-conceived "green" energy projects like Solyndra or Abound Solar that were, conveniently, run or owned by major Obama contributors. None seems to have produced much in the way of jobs. Most are now bankrupt.
Actually you are quite inaccurate, while the taxes where higher, so were the deductions. I remember taking deduction on credit card interest. Reagan changed that. In fact there were enough deductions that most people paid MUCH less in taxes than they do today's "Lower" taxes..
NO, I'm not. Between sales tax, usage taxes, energy taxes, income taxes, CG taxes, sin taxes, taxes on taxes... 3x current tax rates would put me at 150%. Those who pay no tax, are the ones who believe taxes should go up, especially on the rich.
You can diferentiate between this tax and that tax, but by the time you add everything together I'm paying 50% or more on my net income. I am a slave to government.
A flat tax would cure all this rediculous speculation. SS should be phased out for anyone 55 and under, HSA should replace Medicare, and retirement funds privatized.
Not at all, I am just being honest. If I see an idiot, I call it. Anyone who thinks the previous generation is stealing from them, yet votes for liberal policies, is an idiot. I've paid into SS for 35 years, only to have you tell me that if I take anything back I'm stealing from you? That is the definition of a true idiot.
Drop SS for me and give me back what I've invested in it so I can set my own retirement goals privately. Problem solved, I will no longer be "stealing from you"!
Your like the little 14-year-old who came running home with his first paycheck, griping about FICA and wanting to know why "they" stole his money...
...only I've been paying FICA for 15 years now.
nice try though
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Here's a EASY little scenario for you....
Go get your SS statement. If you've ever paid in, which according to your griping you have. Look at the total amount you've paid in over the course of your working career? To hear you talk of "all the stealing" going on.. you're total should be pretty big... Hypothetically lets say that figure is in the thousands. Now close your eyes... and picture a couple more zero's on the end of that figure... Now who's the bigger victim? You or us old boomer geezer's who still are paying?
I'll use our household as an example... Hell... we've got 17 more years to retire... Presuming the current cap (113,700 @ 6.20%) means 7049 dollars per year into SS for a total 119,833 left for us to pay. Add that to our current totals which means by the time we retire we'll be upward of 275,000 paid into Social Security. Now, who's got more skin in this game?
You typed all this, simply to point out who has more skin in the game?
I don't care who has more skin in the game.
The whole point is that if you "refunded" FICA to me, I'd still have to pay for your Medicare / SS , since Medicare in particular is ALSO paid for through deficit spending. Refunding FICA is not a solution to the problems I have with entitlements. That's what I said. If you can't understand that, then you should find a new thread to read.
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But YOU are not being stolen from.
I didn't say I was being stolen from.
I said that if steven_h's proposal was to come true, that would be the equivalent of stealing from me.
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I ask you before, a simple question which you have still failed to answer.
Why should YOU not have to pay, when millions of others have paid, are paying, and will pay? What's so damn special about YOU?
I answered that question, too.
I didn't say I shouldn't have to pay.
I will now point out that you suck at reading comprehension really, really, badly.
Not at all, I am just being honest. If I see an idiot, I call it. Anyone who thinks the previous generation is stealing from them, yet votes for liberal policies, is an idiot.
First off-- you CAN'T refund FICA. It's impossible. The money is spent as soon as they get it, so there's nothing to refund.
So perhaps my mistake was treating your suggestion seriously, when you didn't provide any details of how to actually implement that impossible idea. In retrospect I should've just mocked your proposal.
Anyway, I did mistakenly treat you as a reasonable person -- during which, you hypothesized that we should refund FICA taxes to young people and that would fix the problem.
I said that would be stealing, because we'd STILL have to pay for entitlements (since FICA isn't the only funding source), but we simply wouldn't get the benefits when we get old. I mentioned that this was the same flaw in the Ryan-Romney plan.. cutting for future retirees is just as bad as cutting for current retirees.
Now I realize this back-and-forth is complicated, and this is a long and complicated thread -- but somehow this triggered a catastrophic reading comprehension failure among the opposition.
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I've paid into SS for 35 years, only to have you tell me that if I take anything back I'm stealing from you? That is the definition of a true idiot.
That's not what I said. I said that if you attempted to refund my FICA to me I'd still have to fund your crap through FIT/deficit spending.
Y'all just can't get it through your thick skulls that our entitlements aren't completely funded by FICA.
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Drop SS for me and give me back what I've invested in it so I can set my own retirement goals privately. Problem solved, I will no longer be "stealing from you"!
Individuals aren't stealing anything from anyone. Politicians did the stealing when they decided all taxes should go into one pot and then they blew all that money on many worthless programs to keep them in their jobs.
"Investing" now because the rates are low is about as smart as buying a house you can only afford with a short-term ARM mortgage rate. A large part of the housing crisis was attributed to the reset of ARM's.
to be fair, they're talking about bridges and infrastructure.
we don't "invest" in those things with the idea to sell them in the future for a gain, like some people do with housing. Capital appreciation isn't a goal, it's just about the utility of the bridge.
it really doesn't matter how much our bridges are worth in the market because we don't value them that way.
NO, I'm not. Between sales tax, usage taxes, energy taxes, income taxes, CG taxes, sin taxes, taxes on taxes... 3x current tax rates would put me at 150%. Those who pay no tax, are the ones who believe taxes should go up, especially on the rich.
You can diferentiate between this tax and that tax, but by the time you add everything together I'm paying 50% or more on my net income. I am a slave to government.
A flat tax would cure all this rediculous speculation. SS should be phased out for anyone 55 and under, HSA should replace Medicare, and retirement funds privatized.
I won't disagree, a "Fair tax" would be better, however, the post I replied to, you stated,
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The generation before you paid double and triple the tax rate of your generation, and they used it to build things like interstates that we still use today.
, and I replied that you were inaccurate. That while tax rates were indeed higher, the number of deductions FAR outweighed what we have now, thus reducing the income taxes paid, in totality.
Everyone pays taxes, and those who make more, pay more.
Using data from the Internal Revenue Service in 2009, the top 1% of earners, including individuals with incomes of $343,927 or greater, represented 16.9% of all income and paid 36.7% of all federal taxes. Their average tax rate was 24.01%. The top 0.1% who had incomes of $1,432,890 or greater represented 7.8% of all income and paid 17.11% of all taxes.
Do you think I don't pay taxes? I am a homeowner. I pay property tax for my car and my home, stormwater runoff tax, and a whole host of other taxes. You are not the ONLY one paying taxes.
I had a teacher once that told us, "If someone wants to complain, they will find no shortage of things to complain about.".
Quit complaining about the taxes, and find out what the government is spending them on.
NO, I'm not. Between sales tax, usage taxes, energy taxes, income taxes, CG taxes, sin taxes, taxes on taxes... 3x current tax rates would put me at 150%. Those who pay no tax, are the ones who believe taxes should go up, especially on the rich.
You can diferentiate between this tax and that tax, but by the time you add everything together I'm paying 50% or more on my net income. I am a slave to government.
A flat tax would cure all this rediculous speculation. SS should be phased out for anyone 55 and under, HSA should replace Medicare, and retirement funds privatized.
You cannot possibly be paying 50% of your income in taxes. And ha, ha, net income. Creative accounting, no? Isn't net income "after-tax" income?
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