Sunday Morning Talk Show Thread 26 November 2023

It has to be programmatic cuts. Attrition just won’t cut it and it is very inefficient. Entire agencies must be eliminated.

There was a house in Portland Oregon found to have had @200 registered voters several years ago...

There are those that say, and I’m certainly not convinced, but they say deficit budgets on such a large scale as the United States government don’t matter because they have the GDP and military strength, strength of culture, alliances, etc., to be able to withstand any damage from it. They say no one has the power to call in their loans, the government printing press is always available if needed, and the rules that applied in the past cannot bring down the mega-economy we have.

Fundamentally, I’m a true believer in pay as you go, debt should be managed carefully type guy.

But at the point that the government sits with trillions of dollars in spending and debt, it almost seems like Monopoly money, as in the whole thing is phony and we’re just cruising downhill.

Yeah, and some people in government are focusing their eyes at all the wealth their missing out on in IRAs. How long before they make there greedy attempt at them?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/roth-ira-how-the-richest-americans-use-retirement-accounts-to-avoid-taxes#xj4y7vzkg

The Hottest Tax Break for the Rich Is a Middle-Class Retirement Account
More than $279 billion sits in IRAs with at least $5 million each. They allow the wealthy to avoid taxes and pass on their fortune.

House Democrats Once Again Target Biggest Retirement Accounts

The November 3 version of the Build Back Better Act has resurrected retirement law changes that will curb high balance accounts and popular wealth building strategies including backdoor Roth IRAs and aftertax 401(k) contributions. There’s also a new $2.5 million retirement account reporting mandate, presumably to help the Internal Revenue Service with compliance. The changes are generally progressive and will hit the wealthiest taxpayers, in order to pay for the social policy and climate change bill that currently comes at a 10-year cost of $1.85 trillion.

snip...

The new rules would apply broadly to workplace retirement accounts like 401(k)s and 403(b)s as well as Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and deferred compensation plans.

Contribution Limits On Large Accounts

There would be new contribution limits, essentially prohibiting new retirement account contributions for a taxpayer whose aggregate retirement account balances exceeded $10 million in the prior tax year. It would apply to married couples with taxable income over $450,000 (over $400,000 for singles). There are exceptions fro SEP-IRAs, SIMPLE IRAs and rollovers. But deferred compensation plans are caught up in the new rules.

*****hmmmm.... Is two people making 450K really that rich today?*****

New Longer Statute Of Limitations

The Internal Revenue Service would be given three more years—six instead of three—to pursue violations related to valuation misreporting and prohibited transactions.

*******So they’ll need more time to come after your money, what the new agents and extra time, does the average taxpayer even have a chance?*********

Wow... There, their and they’re... I used to know when to use the right one!

There are those that say, and I’m certainly not convinced, but they say deficit budgets on such a large scale as the United States government don’t matter because they have the GDP and military strength, strength of culture, alliances, etc., to be able to withstand any damage from it. They say no one has the power to call in their loans, the government printing press is always available if needed, and the rules that applied in the past cannot bring down the mega-economy we have.

Those be wrong. Deficits matter.

American taxpayers are now slaves to interest payments--The only way out of this debt death spiral is to cut government expenditures – and fast

Interest on the federal debt is now so immense that it’s consuming 40% of all personal income taxes. The largest source of revenue for the federal government is increasingly being devoted to just servicing the debt, not even paying it down.

The recent monthly Treasury statement from the Fiscal Service showed that the Treasury Department paid $88.9 billion in October on interest for the federal debt. That’s almost double what it paid in October of the previous year. Worse, the Treasury is projecting interest payments for the fiscal year to exceed $1 trillion. Every month that goes by, the Treasury increases that forecast as the outlook worsens.

The $88.9 billion in interest is larger than all but two line items in the monthly report, and one of those items is only slightly larger than the interest expense. The Department of Health and Human Services cost the Treasury $89.8 billion while the Social Security Administration used $117.6 billion. The cost of servicing the debt exceeded everything else, including military spending.

For further context, interest payments in October were greater than the expenses for the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, State, Transportation and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and NASA – combined!

This is the result of the politicians in Washington racking up a $33.7 trillion federal debt. It now takes over a fifth of all government revenues just to pay the interest, and the problem is quickly spiraling out of control.

Even if the deficit were to vanish overnight, the interest expense would still increase because the Treasury doesn’t really pay off debt when it comes due – it rolls the debt over. That means it issues new debt to pay off what it previously borrowed, plus the interest.

The catch is that debt issued today must pay today’s interest rates, so the Treasury is rolling over debt at 5% that was previously issued at 1% to 2%.

The only way out of this debt death spiral is to cut government expenditures – and fast. Interest on the debt is becoming so large that the government will soon be forced to raise much more revenue if spending isn’t drastically cut. That revenue will need to come from either much higher explicit taxes or the hidden tax of inflation.

Taxpayers will be on the hook for trillions of additional dollars, regardless of the collection method. If federal finances continue on their current path, we are only a few years from the entirety of income taxes being needed to finance the debt. If people are struggling to make ends meet now, they’ll be in bread lines by then.

That could probably be harder to do but I’m with you.

Don’t let let door hit you in the ass on your way out. Sorry we are not up to your highhhhh standards.

Im sure. Just one of the 29 ways they cheat. In maricopa county they were using fake addresses like that and then changing the address to a real one later. The fakes only showed up for a few hours. Super slick,hard to catch.