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Where My Money Goes: A visual receipt for your taxes.

wheremymoneygoes.com

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Re: Where My Money Goes: A visual receipt for your taxes.

#31

Post by higher »

higher wrote: post #24
coin wrote: post #19

The site appears to just linearly scale the results, which is not always correct. For example, Social Security is only collected on the first $106,800 of income.

All social security revenue that is not paid out in benefits is replaced with unmarketable treasury securities and spent as part of the general fund. When social security ceases to run a nominal surplus, the money to pay for those securities will come out of the general fund. As you can see, social security is essentially part of the broader budget, and the divide between its budget and the broader budget is strictly…

I see I have been rated down for posting the truth. If you would like to read about the truth, you can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)

"Congress invested these surpluses into special series, non-marketable U.S. Treasury securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. Under the law, the government bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government."

"According to most projections, the Social Security trust fund will begin drawing on its Treasury Notes toward the end of the next decade (around 2018 or 2019), at which time the repayment of these notes will have to be financed from the general fund."

Re: Where My Money Goes: A visual receipt for your taxes.

#32

Post by anigbrowl »

riffer wrote: post #16
slug wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying with a value of 1e20 , 1e21 gives interesting results. More curious is that using konqueror I get one value but with firefox i get another. Seems to be some bit flipping somewhere, since with firefox I get Miscellaneous mandatory programs $16068258000000004096.00 4096, 16384 , etc but with konqueror i get: Miscellaneous mandatory programs $16068258000000005000.00 Maybe some bug with the javascript interpreter…

Why do people always try to break things? This is a serious question pertaining to human nature, not a complaint. I've noticed that anytime I demo something I've built, if the person/people I'm showing have control of the demo they go try to test the outer boundaries of whatever I've built. What makes us want to do that?

Because of what it tells us about the design and utility. This particular tool looks like it will keep working through inevitable period of hyperinflation everyone keeps warning me about, all the way up to the when we cross the National Debt Event Horizon, at which point accounting is suddenly agreed to be an entirely new art form, and computing a restaurant tip requires a PhD in materials science.

Re: Where My Money Goes: A visual receipt for your taxes.

#35

Post by 2arrs2ells »

higher wrote: post #31
higher wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All social security revenue that is not paid out in benefits is replaced with unmarketable treasury securities and spent as part of the general fund. When social security ceases to run a nominal surplus, the money to pay for those securities will come out of the general fund. As you can see, social security is essentially part of the broader budget, and the divide between its budget and the broader budget is strictly…

I see I have been rated down for posting the truth. If you would like to read about the truth, you can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States) "Congress invested these surpluses into special series, non-marketable U.S. Treasury securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. Under the law, the government bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the…

No, you've been rated down for a reply that does not actually address the comment the parent poster made.

Your comment on Social Security accounting (which is correct, as far as I know), has no bearing on the parent's observation that FICA tax doesn't scale linearly - because it is capped at a certain point.

Re: Where My Money Goes: A visual receipt for your taxes.

#37

Post by higher »

2arrs2ells wrote: post #35
higher wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see I have been rated down for posting the truth. If you would like to read about the truth, you can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States) "Congress invested these surpluses into special series, non-marketable U.S. Treasury securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. Under the law, the government bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the…

No, you've been rated down for a reply that does not actually address the comment the parent poster made. Your comment on Social Security accounting (which is correct, as far as I know), has no bearing on the parent's observation that FICA tax doesn't scale linearly - because it is capped at a certain point.

The essential nature of Social Security accounting is such that FICA tax is unrelated to FICA spending. At the moment, much of your FICA tax is spent on general fund items. In the future, much of your income tax will be spent on FICA items.

Re: Where My Money Goes: A visual receipt for your taxes.

#38

Post by anigbrowl »

higher wrote: post #31
higher wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All social security revenue that is not paid out in benefits is replaced with unmarketable treasury securities and spent as part of the general fund. When social security ceases to run a nominal surplus, the money to pay for those securities will come out of the general fund. As you can see, social security is essentially part of the broader budget, and the divide between its budget and the broader budget is strictly…

I see I have been rated down for posting the truth. If you would like to read about the truth, you can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States) "Congress invested these surpluses into special series, non-marketable U.S. Treasury securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. Under the law, the government bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the…

I think the downvote is due a lack of understanding rather than disagreement. What is perhaps not obvious is that payments towards 'social security' in excess of the $106k cap is (or ought to be) allocated towards the payment of interest on those outstanding bonds, hence the apparent linear increase.

But also, your references to 'the truth' unintentionally gives you the air of a conspiracy theorist.

Incidentally, it's noting that the solvency projections are not inevitable but are based on the assumption of steady demographic change. It will be interesting to review these when the 2010 Census data becomes available in December or early 2011.

Re: Where My Money Goes: A visual receipt for your taxes.

#39

Post by Semiapies »

aardvark wrote: post #15

It looks great! One thing I'd like to see, if possible, is an adjustment to account for deficit spending. In other words, if the government is spending $175 for every $100 collected, adjust the expenses accordingly, so we could clearly see what kind of cuts it would take to balance the budget.

Maybe as a bill instead of a receipt, complete with running unpaid balance scaled to tax paid?

Re: Where My Money Goes: A visual receipt for your taxes.

#40

Post by [deleted] »

2arrs2ells wrote: post #35
higher wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see I have been rated down for posting the truth. If you would like to read about the truth, you can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States) "Congress invested these surpluses into special series, non-marketable U.S. Treasury securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. Under the law, the government bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the…

No, you've been rated down for a reply that does not actually address the comment the parent poster made. Your comment on Social Security accounting (which is correct, as far as I know), has no bearing on the parent's observation that FICA tax doesn't scale linearly - because it is capped at a certain point.

[deleted]
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