Posted on 08/22/2011 8:50:31 PM PDT by Graneros
I’ve been blissfully off the grid for the past few days, cycling in Western New York. (Allegany State Park is absolutely gorgeous. Made me be glad to be paying taxes in New York State.) I could forget about the debt ceiling fiasco, 9 percent unemployment, the tea party, runaway health spending, global warming, the NBA lockout…
But back in the real world, I learn from newly minted GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry what’s wrong with America—that middle income Americans don’t pay enough taxes. Really.
We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax. (Quoted in this terrific Ruth Marcus column.)
We’re apparently not dismayed that more than half of all Americans have been in a 30-year recession with little or no income growth. We’re apparently willing to write off Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, which are the big federal taxes for low- and middle-income Americans. A family of four earning $30,000 may pay no federal income tax, but it pays $4,590 in payroll taxes (including the employer’s share, which economists believe is ultimately paid by the employee in the form of lower wages). Payroll taxes are much bigger than income taxes for most families.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Good points. They really need someone who can articulate good ideas in 2 sentences or less. Real simple so that everyone who hears it immediately understands it, and simple and quick enough so that it get throught the MSM bias.
You do realize that there are people who will still argue that the 16th isn't really needed ~ that the "implied powers" (of states) is a sufficient doctrine to cover an income tax.
It's just a variation on classical sumptuary laws and those were well known to the Founders, and none of them objected to them.
About twice a day I post "IF I was a (congressional) Republican, I would say..." . It's like they have a cheat card that says if anyone mentions taxes repeat the same phrase over and over again.
Yeh, it gets boring. Lots of times I just go to you tube and pull up some Ronald Reagan speeches to get in a better mood. LOL.
I cited the numbers. Some of the excess spending is from giving money to the Dept of Ed for distribution to pay teachers salaries in the various states. Some of it is from paying welfare recipients for better, more extensive health care benefits than my insurance covers.
Some of it comes from spending money to hire people. I-10 had work done near where I live. Every night, they closed down 6 miles to one lane. Every night I would drive by. Over a 3 month period, I could count the number of times on one hand that I saw more than two people moving, or any equipment used that I could not carry by hand. You don’t repair an Interstate using a pick and shovel. Particularly not if you only have one person actually using the pick. I’d be willing to bet we were paying well over $250/night for the ‘work’ done, but we were not getting $250 of value, let alone whatever we actually were paying.
But we are not in debt from buying things. Stuff. We don’t spend $3,700 billion on ‘stuff’. Most of that money goes to people, in salaries, supplements, unemployment, health care, prescription drug buys, etc. Benefits that people want because they get more than they pay for. We pay for $2,100 billion, and get $3,700 billion, and we don’t care because our kids will get stuck with the bill.
I find that immoral.
Social Security is separately funded with its own tax, as is Medicare, Workmen's Compensation, federal retirement systems, and so on.
Even Interstate highways are separately financed.
when you buy more "stuff" than you can pay for you run a deficit. But the entitlements for which separate taxes are collected are not the cause of the deficit.
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/york-spending-not-entitlements-created-deficits ~ argue with this guy.
Unemployment:
“During recessions and while unemployment remains high during recoveries, the federal government has historically created temporary, wholly federally funded programs providing further weeks of benefits. Congress created the most recent such program, Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), in June 2008. Workers who exhaust their regular state UI benefits before they can find a job can receive up to 34 weeks of EUC benefits regardless of their state’s unemployment rate; workers in states with high unemployment rates can receive up to 53 weeks of EUC benefits, as well as EB benefits if their state’s unemployment insurance laws allow it.”
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1466
SCHIP:
“SCHIP was created in 1997 as a ten-year program; to continue past federal fiscal year 2007, passage of a reauthorization bill was required. The first two reauthorization bills to pass through Congress would also expand the program’s scope; President George W. Bush vetoed them as improper expansions. A two-year reauthorization bill was signed into law by the President in December 2007 that would merely extend current SCHIP services without expanding any portion of the program. With the 2008 Presidential and Congressional elections bringing Democrats to a majority in both houses of Congress and to the Oval Office, SCHIP was reauthorized and expanded in the same bill through fiscal year 2013....
...In the wake of President Barack Obama’s inauguration and the Democrats’ increased majorities in both houses of Congress, legislative leaders moved quickly to break the political stalemate over SCHIP expansion. On January 14, 2009, the House passed H.R. 2 on a vote of 290-138. The bill authorized spending an added $32.8 billion to expand the health coverage program to include about 4 million more children, including coverage of legal immigrants[43] with no waiting period for the first time. A cigarette tax increase of 62 cents—bringing the total tax on a pack of cigarettes to $1.01—an increase of tax on chewing tobacco from $0.195/lb. to $0.50/lb.—as well as tax increases on other tobacco products[44] will fund the program’s expansion.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCHIP
Medicare Part D:
“The Part D account had $49.4 billion income in 2008. Premiums paid by beneficiaries and by states accounted for $12.1 billion income; $37.3 billion, 75.5 percent of revenues, comes from federal general revenues. Unlike the HI trust fund, Part D funds do not depend on payroll taxes or investment interest.”
http://www.ehow.com/facts_6798510_funding-medicare-part-d.html
Thank you GWB for the latter boondoggle.
Interstate:
“About 70% of the construction and maintenance costs of highways in the U.S. are covered through user fees (net of collection costs), primarily fuel taxes collected by the federal government and state and local governments, and to a much lesser extent tolls collected on toll roads and bridges. The 1956 Highway Trust Fund, established by the Highway Revenue Act, mandated a three-cent-per-gallon tax, soon increased to 4.5 cents. In 1993 the tax reached 18.4 cents per gallon where it remains.[31]
The rest of the costs are borne by general fund receipts, bond issues, and designated property and other taxes. The federal contribution is overwhelmingly from motor vehicle and fuel taxes (93.5% in 2007), as is about 60% of the state contribution. However, local contributions are overwhelmingly from sources other than user fees.[32] The portion of the user fees spent on highways themselves covers about 57% of costs, as approximately one-sixth of the user fees are diverted to other programs, prominently including mass transit. In the eastern United States, large sections of some Interstate Highways planned or built prior to 1956 are operated as toll roads.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Financing
Even the federal funding for Interstates doesn’t cover costs, so it once again is getting more from government than what is put in to government - voting to take money from the unborn to buy us things now.
Democrats like to use Interstate funds for downstream maintenance though.
So, what you are telling us is that the Interstate highway program is working as it was designed to work.
That might be news
I’m pointing out that even there, the feds don’t pay all costs from the trust fund. Medicaid Part D has no trust fund at all. SCHIP was greatly expanded with no honest funding stream. Unemployment for 23 weeks comes funded, but Congress regularly increases those benefits without any funding stream - just general revenue.
There ARE examples where the government has stayed honest. My military retirement has been almost entirely (from 84 on) paid for as we go. And oddly enough, it is one of the few things the Democrats want to change, although its costs are very low for a funded retirement system.
But on the whole, we have 60 cents of taxes paying for a dollar of ‘benefit’, although I think in reality there is so much fraud and waste that our 60 cents probably buys most of us well under 50 cents of value. I cannot recall ever seeing a skinny poor person using food stamps. Most that I’ve seen have been grossly obese, while news articles indicate it is common for food stamps to be sold 50 cents on the dollar to fund drugs. My daughter’s neighbor offered her a 3:1 ratio of food stamps for cash, but my daughter told her to go to hell.
But many of those programs were started to allow ‘us’ to feel good about ourselves. Arizona has Medicaid funding problems because VOTERS passed an initiative greatly expanding eligibility without valid funding:
” Arizona voters enacted Proposition 204 in 2000, which increased Medicaid eligibility for residents up to 100% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), including parents and childless adults. Prop 204 stated that this was to be paid for using the tobacco litigation settlement money and available funding.
• On January 1, 2009 there were 238,000 members enrolled in the Prop 204 expansion. As of January 1, 2011 this number had grown to 377,000....
...If the waiver is granted, the Governor’s budget includes a rollback of the Prop. 204 populations effective October 1, 2011. This rollback is expected to impact approximately 280,000 Arizonans.
• The overall AHCCCS population would drop to level supported by the program on September 2007.”
It was ‘sold’ as using tobacco settlement money, but also required the state to fund it as needed. A recent decision has opened the door to cut it with the judge ruling that voters cannot bind the legislature to open-ended funding.
http://www.azleg.gov/jlbc/ballotprop204.pdf
Are you seriously arguing this? You don’t think when nearly half the population pays zero income tax, and many of those get a check back larger than what they had withheld, that the result is not exactly what we have now...a voting population who is voting the Democrat party into power to keep their handouts and who just want to bilk the other half of the voters?
Obviously, there are other federal taxes. There are also FICA, fees, use taxes, gas taxes, etc, etc. We are talking about the income tax which is the ongoing debate in our political system. Regardless of other taxes, the income tax system is sorely broken. I am not sure how you can possibly disagree with this, or why you are on FR if you think it is fine as currently functioning.
Regarding state income taxes, or any tax for that matter, the FEDERAL income tax quite selectively allows folks to exclude some taxes from income before it is applied.
Something with which you should be quite happy, since, after all, you believe it is always better for people not to pay taxes than to pay them.
This begs the question: if there were a tax deduction for the descendants of former slaves, or a tax deduction to compensate people who can't speak English, or an income tax handout to people who don't actually have any income, you would, in your absolutist position that it's always better when someone, somewhere, for any reason whatsoever doesn't pay taxes doesn't pay them, support those deductions, right? Criminals are unfairly disadvantaged in our society: if they receive a lifetime tax exemption after they've paid their debt to The People, you'd support that tax credit, right?
Ready to defend that hill? OK. Have fun.
It doesn't take anything to reduce your absolutist position to an absurdity, because it's already absurd.
When that is done states, for example, are encouraged to collect more taxes through that device. You can just imagine what pressure the public would bring to bear on state legislatures should the federal income tax no longer exclude state income taxes from income!
And that is why, when sales tax deductions expire in 2012, states are all planning to lower their sales taxes, right? Or why New York State got rid of their income taxes when the law changed so that you could deduct either state income tax or sales tax but not both, right?
Your "argument" is nonsense. No state politician has ever changed his mind about altering a tax schedule or direct levy because of a federal deduction. This is patently and completely ridiculous. State politicians face voters ire over the taxes themselves, and couldn't care less about whether the federal government allows or disallows their local taxes singly or in any combination.
You're grasping at straws because you originally claimed Perry would be able to change a number of state and local taxes as President, and now backpedaling furiously on the very baldest of tires. Give up. You lost that point completely. If Perry and a Republican Congress exempted ALL local taxes at ALL income levels from federal taxation, no state would go out and raise taxes as a result. If Perry and a Republican Congress removed the federal exemption, NO state would lower taxes as a result. Like the rest of your absolutist garbage, this transparently idiotic claim is a complete waste of electrons.
So, no, you are wrong ~ federal tax policies have a profound effect on state taxes ~ DUH!!!
They have no effect on federal politicians, who couldn't care less, and they have no effect on state and local politicians for the same reason. They also have no effect on the wealthy, who can choose for the most part where they want to live, and they have no effect on those paying 0 federal tax, or those receiving "earned" income tax credits. They affect only Schedule C and schedule A filers, and those filers don't protest against new taxes on the basis of whether a few percent of their income is going to be excluded on the federal return: they protest against the actual taxes, themselves.
Get a clue: why do I care if my gross income is taxed on 2.5% less income than I would care about the 2.5% being taken out by the Commonwealth in the first place? Jeez, learn some math. You actually think taking a 10% tax liability against 2.5%, (that is: <0.25%), actually matters more to people than the actual tax of 2.5%? Wow. Just wow. No wonder it doesn't bother you that half the country doesn't pay taxes -- you don't understand basic arithmetic let alone quantified science or mathematics.
(idiot! ~ taxes are forever ~ none shall escape).
Genius: the income tax is evil. But progressive taxation is unspeakably evil. It's time everyone paid, "their fare share." Perry's point is valid: there is a better argument to be made to get the deadbeats to pay "their fair share" than there is to place an even greater burden on those already shouldering a disproportionate share.
No, he's not arguing it seriously. He's just arguing it.
It is just silly not to count the direct benefits against the amount paid. Unlike Defense or some other general expenditure whose value to an individual is unrelated to how much that individual paid for it, SS purports to return a benefit proportional to what you paid for it. It is much more like a fee to use a national park than it is like a tax. It isn’t entirely proportional, however, because it pays higher benefits per dollar contributed for low income workers than it does for high income workers.
[Now, your hypothesis ~ that people who pay no “federal income tax” are unlikely to pay other taxes ~ BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What country do you live in?
And groceries not subject to sales tax? You ain’t from around here are you!]
Absolutely, states with income taxes use much the same progressive scheme as the Feds, so if you don’t owe any Federal Income Tax you probably will not owe the State either.
And I don’t know where you live, but in CA we have a high sales tax but it does not apply to groceries, medications, or any services including rents — it only applies to prepared foods, and retail products.
They die.
Without serious advice from a good actuary who has access to some fairly comprehensive data regarding life expectancies, it is simply not possible to compute a "benefit for an individual" ~ that matches up with what he is paying.
Most of these analyses take what people pay, project what they can get (if they live) and come up with some sort of deficit. The trustees (guys who actually run SS) have actuaries and they do an entirely different sort of analysis that includes project deaths. Federal retirement has the same feature ~ when you die it's over!
That's a pretty pathetic argument.
They still don't pay their fair share.
Don't be an apologist for the welfare class.
The collection of money from people's pockets without making it clear exactly what each dollar is for is NO WAY TO COLLECT TAXES.
No, we don't buy the Leftwingtard lie that a Progressive Income Tax is right. We don't even buy that any income tax is right.
Proposing that we raise taxes on the poor to pay bigger dividends to the international banking sector is CRIMINAL.
“One of the really good reasons for NOT counting benefits is for many payees THEY NEVER HAPPEN.
They die.”
Seriously ? You’re going to claim that statistical truths don’t matter ? Just because there are exceptions, or even if no benefits will ever EXACTLY match an actuarial estimate, you’re going to throw out the entire actuary profession ? That doesn’t sound reasonable to me.
Proposing that we raise taxes on the international banking sector, knowing it will force them to raise the cost of all goods and services they finance so the burden falls on the poor, is CRIMINAL.
It’s even more criminal to dump the bank bailouts on the middle class.
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