Showing posts with label Social Security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Security. Show all posts
Monday, December 09, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Friday, February 01, 2013
Monday, August 20, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
It's True
Here's a photo that has been making the rounds lately...
Is it true? As we say in Minnesota, "You betcha!"
When Paul Ryan's dad died suddenly of a heart attack when the VP pick was 16, he used the Social Security death benefits to pay for college. Once again, I find it enormously frustrating that someone on the right shits all over the nice place in which he lives simply because he read Ayn Rand and is on an adolescent power trip.
Oh, and I also don't want to hear any more bitching about the "liberal media" after this piece in the New York Times.
His self-reliance followed him to summer camp, where as a counselor he canoed and hiked, and into young adulthood, where he took up deer hunting, a fact noted in his engagement notice in 2000 in The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “Ryan is an avid hunter and fisherman,” the paper reported, “who does his own skinning and butchering and makes his own Polish sausage and bratwurst.”
Self reliance aided by...someone else...and something else...Social Security. In fact, isn't Paul Ryan a living example of what President Obama meant by not doing everything on your own?
Is it true? As we say in Minnesota, "You betcha!"
When Paul Ryan's dad died suddenly of a heart attack when the VP pick was 16, he used the Social Security death benefits to pay for college. Once again, I find it enormously frustrating that someone on the right shits all over the nice place in which he lives simply because he read Ayn Rand and is on an adolescent power trip.
Oh, and I also don't want to hear any more bitching about the "liberal media" after this piece in the New York Times.
His self-reliance followed him to summer camp, where as a counselor he canoed and hiked, and into young adulthood, where he took up deer hunting, a fact noted in his engagement notice in 2000 in The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “Ryan is an avid hunter and fisherman,” the paper reported, “who does his own skinning and butchering and makes his own Polish sausage and bratwurst.”
Self reliance aided by...someone else...and something else...Social Security. In fact, isn't Paul Ryan a living example of what President Obama meant by not doing everything on your own?
Monday, March 26, 2012
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
How Does This Play Out?
I had a very enjoyable exchange with one of the many anonymous posters in comments. I'm not sure who he or she was but even though we were ideologically in different places, we actually had a reasonable and substantive debate.
The poster said something which stuck with me and left me curious.
I submit to you and your readers, that most people could handle the complexities of life if they were just allowed to do so. At some point, your mother 'cut the apron strings' and allowed you to 'sink or swim'. Unless we are all still breast-fed, adversity was overcome starting at an early age.
Conservative vs. Liberal seems to disagree on the amount of adversity a citizen should be allowed to experience before 'the system' provides for that individual.
I enjoy this person's optimism and agree that people in our culture need to handle the complexities of life in a more diligent and effective way. They are very emotionally retarded about it now and I see it every day. I constantly pummel my own kids with "Figure it out yourself." In the end, it will help them.
Yet this comment evokes several questions. First, who is not "allowing them" to manage complexities? Second, what is meant by "cutting the apron strings and allowing you to sink or swim?" I would assume the latter means cutting or eliminating Social Security and Medicare. Is that correct? I'm not just asking the poster. I'm asking all of you because that seems to be a general sentiment.
By intimating that some people will "sink" (sort of Darwin's survival of the fittest thing), how do any of you envision that will play out? Social Security, for example, has been proven to have reduced poverty in the elderly. So when the plug is literally pulled on grandma, are you going to be alright with that?
As the poster said, conservatives and liberals do disagree on the amount of adversity a citizen should have to face before aid steps in. I'm just wondering if the conservatives have really thought how "sink or swim" works as a practical application in reality. We're talking about the elderly in our population here and they are already treated like crap by a culture trapped in the hubris of worshiping youth.
So, I'm hoping that the poster clarifies his comments because I could easily have misinterpreted them. Anyone else should feel free to offer their slant...as always:)
The poster said something which stuck with me and left me curious.
I submit to you and your readers, that most people could handle the complexities of life if they were just allowed to do so. At some point, your mother 'cut the apron strings' and allowed you to 'sink or swim'. Unless we are all still breast-fed, adversity was overcome starting at an early age.
Conservative vs. Liberal seems to disagree on the amount of adversity a citizen should be allowed to experience before 'the system' provides for that individual.
I enjoy this person's optimism and agree that people in our culture need to handle the complexities of life in a more diligent and effective way. They are very emotionally retarded about it now and I see it every day. I constantly pummel my own kids with "Figure it out yourself." In the end, it will help them.
Yet this comment evokes several questions. First, who is not "allowing them" to manage complexities? Second, what is meant by "cutting the apron strings and allowing you to sink or swim?" I would assume the latter means cutting or eliminating Social Security and Medicare. Is that correct? I'm not just asking the poster. I'm asking all of you because that seems to be a general sentiment.
By intimating that some people will "sink" (sort of Darwin's survival of the fittest thing), how do any of you envision that will play out? Social Security, for example, has been proven to have reduced poverty in the elderly. So when the plug is literally pulled on grandma, are you going to be alright with that?
As the poster said, conservatives and liberals do disagree on the amount of adversity a citizen should have to face before aid steps in. I'm just wondering if the conservatives have really thought how "sink or swim" works as a practical application in reality. We're talking about the elderly in our population here and they are already treated like crap by a culture trapped in the hubris of worshiping youth.
So, I'm hoping that the poster clarifies his comments because I could easily have misinterpreted them. Anyone else should feel free to offer their slant...as always:)
Monday, September 27, 2010
Whither the Tax Cuts
In what has to be the most pathetic display I have seen in quite awhile in Washington DC, it appears that the Democrats are going to wait until after the election to take up the issue of the Bush tax cuts. Why they are not taking a vote is pure stupidity.
Most Americans want the tax cuts to be extended for all but the upper 2 percent. It's a slam dunk for the Dems heading out to campaign for the month. Even if they don't have the votes, they can point to the GOP and completely illustrate which party stands for the middle class and which does not.
They can also call the Republicans on their credibility gap regarding the tax cuts and what it will mean for the deficit. The simple fact is that if the budget is to be balanced by 2020 while making the cuts permanent AND protecting the programs (Social Security, Medicare, Defense etc) the GOP (in their Pledge To America) says that they will protect, the entirety of the rest of the federal government will have to be abolished. The complete absurdity of the GOP position needs to be aired. But now with no vote in either House, this won't happen.
People need to understand some basic facts about taxes. Here is an excellent summation from a recent comment by blk.
The average guy (someone who makes, say, $100,000 or less a year) will pay the regular income tax rate, which is 28% at $100K, as well as payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare, which is 6.2% on $100K).
Now the rich are different. Much of their income can come from capital gains, which is taxed at the 15% capital gains tax rate. So, if you're rich, you just arrange to get most of your income in the form of capital gains taxes (stock bonuses, dividends, etc.) instead of salary. That way you pay taxes at half the rate of regular guys, and you pay no payroll taxes at all.
This is why Warren Buffet blasted the Bush tax system: he paid taxes at a 17.7% rate on his $46 million in 2006, while his secretary, who made $60K, paid taxes at a 30% rate.
And it's easy to arrange any percentage of your income to come as dividends. If you own a corporation, you decide how much salary you are paid. You also decide how to distribute dividends from profits. You simply adjust the slider to more dividends and less salary if you want to pay less tax. The IRS might get suspicious if you pay yourself $1 (as the GM CEO slyly did while accepting stock in place of salary). But paying yourself a salary of half a million dollars while giving yourself ten million dollars in dividends will still mean you're paying half the tax per dollar earned than the average person, and the IRS will never blink an eye.
This point was further driven home in a recent editorial by John Verant, a lawyer here in Minnesota.
The past 30 years have witnessed the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of America. When Ronald Reagan came to power, the richest 1 percent of Americans held 20 percent of the total wealth. When he left office, that figure was 36 percent. Today it is 43. Since 1980, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans had their share of all income increase 2 1/2 times. And the top 0.1 percent had their share of our national earnings increase an amazing six times.
And yet we hear a constant drone about the evils of "soaking the rich" and how awful that would be for the free market should the tax cuts for the upper income brackets be allowed to expire.
The problem with this argument, as even Adam Smith knew, is that the "free market" is an objective measure of value only when parties have relatively equal bargaining strength. When bargaining strength is grossly disproportionate, as is usually the case in employer-employee relationships, the market is a compass that indicates nothing more principled than He Who Has the Power.
So, all of you Smith lovers out there can find another colonial to prop up as "evidence" that your ideas actually have practical application in reality. This is our reality now and it sucks. Adam Smith is completely irrelevant.
Verant goes on to echo blk as well as make some key points as to how we arrived here.
Our leaders changed the rules of the game.
But how can one measure this disparity?
The top 25 hedge fund managers in America collectively received $25 billion in compensation last year, an amount equivalent to that paid to 658,000 schoolteachers responsible for the education of 13 million students
The CEO of one of Minnesota's health insurance companies receives compensation equal to that of about 1,600 nurses.
These could be the Democrats talking points. They would have Main Street on their side in less than a second because this is the very essence of why our economy sucks as bad as it does right now. Enmity for Wall Street is at an all time high! But the Dems are too afraid of being called a "socialist" or "Hitler" even though there is nothing remotely socialist about having the government do their fucking job and actually defend us against these pathological scumbags.
It's no wonder the Democrat's base isn't as energized as the GOP's base. Their leaders are submitting five weeks before the election has even happened.
Most Americans want the tax cuts to be extended for all but the upper 2 percent. It's a slam dunk for the Dems heading out to campaign for the month. Even if they don't have the votes, they can point to the GOP and completely illustrate which party stands for the middle class and which does not.
They can also call the Republicans on their credibility gap regarding the tax cuts and what it will mean for the deficit. The simple fact is that if the budget is to be balanced by 2020 while making the cuts permanent AND protecting the programs (Social Security, Medicare, Defense etc) the GOP (in their Pledge To America) says that they will protect, the entirety of the rest of the federal government will have to be abolished. The complete absurdity of the GOP position needs to be aired. But now with no vote in either House, this won't happen.
People need to understand some basic facts about taxes. Here is an excellent summation from a recent comment by blk.
The average guy (someone who makes, say, $100,000 or less a year) will pay the regular income tax rate, which is 28% at $100K, as well as payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare, which is 6.2% on $100K).
Now the rich are different. Much of their income can come from capital gains, which is taxed at the 15% capital gains tax rate. So, if you're rich, you just arrange to get most of your income in the form of capital gains taxes (stock bonuses, dividends, etc.) instead of salary. That way you pay taxes at half the rate of regular guys, and you pay no payroll taxes at all.
This is why Warren Buffet blasted the Bush tax system: he paid taxes at a 17.7% rate on his $46 million in 2006, while his secretary, who made $60K, paid taxes at a 30% rate.
And it's easy to arrange any percentage of your income to come as dividends. If you own a corporation, you decide how much salary you are paid. You also decide how to distribute dividends from profits. You simply adjust the slider to more dividends and less salary if you want to pay less tax. The IRS might get suspicious if you pay yourself $1 (as the GM CEO slyly did while accepting stock in place of salary). But paying yourself a salary of half a million dollars while giving yourself ten million dollars in dividends will still mean you're paying half the tax per dollar earned than the average person, and the IRS will never blink an eye.
This point was further driven home in a recent editorial by John Verant, a lawyer here in Minnesota.
The past 30 years have witnessed the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of America. When Ronald Reagan came to power, the richest 1 percent of Americans held 20 percent of the total wealth. When he left office, that figure was 36 percent. Today it is 43. Since 1980, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans had their share of all income increase 2 1/2 times. And the top 0.1 percent had their share of our national earnings increase an amazing six times.
And yet we hear a constant drone about the evils of "soaking the rich" and how awful that would be for the free market should the tax cuts for the upper income brackets be allowed to expire.
The problem with this argument, as even Adam Smith knew, is that the "free market" is an objective measure of value only when parties have relatively equal bargaining strength. When bargaining strength is grossly disproportionate, as is usually the case in employer-employee relationships, the market is a compass that indicates nothing more principled than He Who Has the Power.
So, all of you Smith lovers out there can find another colonial to prop up as "evidence" that your ideas actually have practical application in reality. This is our reality now and it sucks. Adam Smith is completely irrelevant.
Verant goes on to echo blk as well as make some key points as to how we arrived here.
Our leaders changed the rules of the game.
- They changed the tax code so that Warren Buffet now pays income tax at a rate slightly less than one-half that paid by his secretary.
- They permitted businesses to use tactics in labor negotiations that in Europe would be criminal.
- They permitted corporations to undergo reorganizations in which they extinguished their obligations to employee pension funds, while their obligations to banks were held sacrosanct.
As a direct consequence, today the richest 1 percent of Americans own as much as the bottom 95 percent, a disparity greater than at any time in our history. Money is power, and having a tiny minority holding the bulk of the power is contrary to the most fundamental premises of a democracy.
This is the exact reason why the GOP and their supporters want the tax cuts to stay the way they are. The people that are funding the so called grass roots of the Tea Party (the Koch Brothers, for example) desperately want this system will stay in place. And who can blame them? This sort of insane disparity gives them more power.But how can one measure this disparity?
The top 25 hedge fund managers in America collectively received $25 billion in compensation last year, an amount equivalent to that paid to 658,000 schoolteachers responsible for the education of 13 million students
The CEO of one of Minnesota's health insurance companies receives compensation equal to that of about 1,600 nurses.
These could be the Democrats talking points. They would have Main Street on their side in less than a second because this is the very essence of why our economy sucks as bad as it does right now. Enmity for Wall Street is at an all time high! But the Dems are too afraid of being called a "socialist" or "Hitler" even though there is nothing remotely socialist about having the government do their fucking job and actually defend us against these pathological scumbags.
It's no wonder the Democrat's base isn't as energized as the GOP's base. Their leaders are submitting five weeks before the election has even happened.
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