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Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

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Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#151

Post by encoderer »

ataggart wrote: post #147
Ratufa wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your scenarios, while technically accurate, leave something out. Here's another version: D) Your child spends his/her high-school years mowing lawns, doing part-time jobs, etc, in order to save some money to help pay their way through college. You encourage them to do so. The money earned is put in a jar. You take that money, replace it with an IOU, and use it to pay for household expenses along with more frivolous t…

True, but there's an easy solution: take out a loan in your yet-to-be-born grandkids' name.

...after all, they benefit by their mother/father having a college education......

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#152

Post by yv »

hugh3 wrote: post #55
Poiesis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, it's a general law of NPR reporting that a left-wing think tank is called a "think tank" and a right-wing think tank is called a "right-wing think tank". I don't really have a dog in this fight, but a quick search suggests you may be mistaken. [site:npr.org "right-wing think tank"] os 8 results; [site:npr.org "think tank"] has about 2380. Nothing funny in robots.txt. But you never know, maybe there aren't that…

Or perhaps they rarely quote right-wing think tanks? Still, a bit more googling: 7 hits for "right-wing think tank" vs 4 hits for "left-wing think tank", so apparently they don't use either term very often. 1200 hits for "liberal think tank" vs 285 for "conservative think tank" vs 447 for "libertarian think tank" (all of which seem to be Cato) vs 6 for "moderate think tank". 3 for "Republican think tank", 345 for "De…

These numbers of grossly inaccurate. Go to the last results page of each query to see the real hit count.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#153

Post by philwelch »

ataggart wrote: post #127
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan supported sending people statements of what was in their social security. His idea was that if people never saw what was in there, they'd never miss it when it was gone. I think this is a logical extension of that idea, and its great. I'd also like to see the flip side of the receipt contain a guess for how the same tax amount would break down the following year based on curre…

>His idea was that if people never saw what was in there... The problem of course is there's no "there" there. Any funds collected today by payroll taxes, and not used for today's benefits, are lent to the general fund and spent. There are no funds being saved for next year's benefits, much less the current tax payers. Now, it is true that the Social Security system then holds "assets" in exchange for that cash, name…

"Putting money in a jar" is a very handwavy way of addressing the problem of saving billions of dollars. You don't just put billions of dollars in a "jar". In practice, amounts that large have to be invested in some way. If you rule out federal treasury bills, what does that leave? State and municipal bonds? Pretty tricky (you could make a case for it though). How about stocks? No, that's de facto nationalization of industry. Commodities? Government interference in the market. Real estate? The government has enough land. How would you actually save the Social Security trust fund?

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#154

Post by philwelch »

xenophanes wrote: post #112
timr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can define "welfare" however you like, but it doesn't change the reality that no politician -- on either side of the aisle -- is seriously proposing cuts to Social Security or Medicare. Old people comprise the base of both political parties.

I agree with you that the Republicans aren't going to do much of what I want. I don't agree that all politicians are Democrats or Republicans, or that it's pointless to speak about issues where the parties in power aren't making good proposals.

Nearly all federal politicians with a realistic chance of winning federal office are Democrats or Republicans, with the exception of one Socialist, and a couple Democrats and Republicans running as independents because they lost their primaries.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#155

Post by zumda »

kitt wrote: post #41
jsz0 wrote: post #15

I always thought it would be a good idea to let people decide how part of their tax dollars were going to be spent. Set aside maybe 20-30% and let them choose which programs to give extra funding to. I imagine most of it would end up in education and social programs.

And this is what I was about to post, but instead of 20-30%, make it 51%. Allow taxpayers to decide where (the broad categories the receipt listed are a perfect starting point) their tax dollars are going. The remaining 49% can be discretionary, let the government decide where that goes: fill in the gaps for items needed, but that no one wants to pay for. Such a policy would give people a sense of power over the mone…

But then the rich would have a lot more power over the budget then the poor.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#156

Post by yummyfajitas »

illumin8 wrote: post #40
kqr2 wrote: post #26

Here's another nice visualization of US government spending: http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

This is amazing. I find it incredible that only .100 billion is going towards "Financial Crimes and Enforcement" given the huge amount of fraud and outright criminal activity that has occurred in our banking sector. This is actually down 10% from last year. Regardless of your political views, left or right, this shows you what the priorities of our government are. After the S&L crisis in the 80s, over 1000 banksters…

While I'd love to see all the home borrowers who lied on their loan applications jailed, it just isn't going to happen. They are "victims" who need a bailout.

Besides, it's probably also not that useful to do. From now on, you can expect banks to do a little more verification, so creating disincentives for mortgage application fraud is not that pressing an issue.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#157

Post by untamedmedley »

The way some of the line items are written/described is very misleading.

Setting aside money for "Low Income K-12 students" or Foreign Aid or Amtrak (with prices as high as flying and quadruple the travel time) does not necessarily mean that investment is getting results.

I'd only trust a receipt like this if it were annotated with hard numbers on how my dollars turn into meaningful progress.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#158

Post by camiller »

ataggart wrote: post #127
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan supported sending people statements of what was in their social security. His idea was that if people never saw what was in there, they'd never miss it when it was gone. I think this is a logical extension of that idea, and its great. I'd also like to see the flip side of the receipt contain a guess for how the same tax amount would break down the following year based on curre…

>His idea was that if people never saw what was in there... The problem of course is there's no "there" there. Any funds collected today by payroll taxes, and not used for today's benefits, are lent to the general fund and spent. There are no funds being saved for next year's benefits, much less the current tax payers. Now, it is true that the Social Security system then holds "assets" in exchange for that cash, name…

>The problem of course is there's no "there" there. Any funds collected today by payroll taxes, and not used for today's benefits, are lent to the general fund and spent. There are no funds being saved for next year's benefits, much less the current tax payers.

And in a short 5 years the direction changes because 2015 is when SS outflow is expected to exceed inflow and they have to start using some of the interest income off those bonds. In 2025 the inflows and interest income become insufficient and the SS trust fund has to start selling the bonds and by 2035 the assets are themselves exhausted.

The 2010 OASDI Trustees Report http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/TR/2010/tr2010.pdf

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#159

Post by TGJ »

philwelch wrote: post #153
ataggart wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>His idea was that if people never saw what was in there... The problem of course is there's no "there" there. Any funds collected today by payroll taxes, and not used for today's benefits, are lent to the general fund and spent. There are no funds being saved for next year's benefits, much less the current tax payers. Now, it is true that the Social Security system then holds "assets" in exchange for that cash, name…

"Putting money in a jar" is a very handwavy way of addressing the problem of saving billions of dollars. You don't just put billions of dollars in a "jar". In practice, amounts that large have to be invested in some way. If you rule out federal treasury bills, what does that leave? State and municipal bonds? Pretty tricky (you could make a case for it though). How about stocks? No, that's de facto nationalization of…

Why do large amounts have to be invested? Is it because of inflation or large amounts of money cannot sit around without someone wanting to touch it?

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#160

Post by TGJ »

jasonkester wrote: post #144

Screw receipts. What I want is a bill. The IRS seems plenty good at figuring out how much I should have paid in taxes and hounding me about it. Why not do those calculations in February and send me a bill: "We calculated that you owe $14,278 in taxes this year. Please submit payment along with the stub below. Alternately, you may choose to submit a tax return for our review." Government gets their money. I save a bit…

I don't think your idea would ever work. I think the way the tax system gets by everyday with all the corruption and waste associated with it is by the simple premise "Out of sight, out of mind". Taxes are paid by the average Joe a little at a time, I think most Joe's would simply freak out if they received a total sum bill at the end of the year. Actually, your idea would work in a perfect system, but we know how rare those are.
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