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USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

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Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#131

Post by xienze »

Joeri wrote: post #125
rqebmm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Federal government collects about 15-17 % income tax. Including when the top rate was 90%+. Even assuming that is true, it wouldn't ch…

In practice a 20% flat tax on all people and corporations without exceptions and deductions would be more progressive than the current system. The wealthy pay very little taxes.

A couple things...

The parent is talking about "progressive" as in "the tax gets progressively higher as you make more money", not in the "social justice" sense. The flat tax being regressive means that the poor would have to actually pay more in taxes than they do now, which is very little. That's seen as a bad thing. Obviously there are solutions to that in flat tax proposals.

Second, "the wealthy pay very little taxes" is a meme. I mean, look at what we've got here:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-...

Those making $250K and up are responsible for 51.6% of all income tax revenue. How much more should they be expected to contribute? Remember: the truly wealthy can live anywhere in the world. There's a balancing act that needs to be established between "you're not paying your fair share" and "soak the rich."

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#132

Post by dlp211 »

Joeri wrote: post #125
rqebmm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Federal government collects about 15-17 % income tax. Including when the top rate was 90%+. Even assuming that is true, it wouldn't ch…

In practice a 20% flat tax on all people and corporations without exceptions and deductions would be more progressive than the current system. The wealthy pay very little taxes.

This is such a ridiculous argument because you will never replace all taxes with a simple 20% tax since states, counties, localities, and ports all have the ability and incentive to tax and impose fees.

Due to this, I will focus on what it means to replace the income tax system with a flat 20%. A family of 4 (2 kids under 18) making $50,000 per year pays about $200 in federal income taxes if they do nothing but file their taxes and take the standard deduction, personal deduction, EITC, and Child Tax Credit. A family of 4 making 70k pays something like $2000. A family of 4 making $150k last year contributing to 401k, HSA, IRA's, 2 kids under 18, have an effective tax rate of like 8%.

In every single one of these cases, the families would be worst off (some significantly) if they were required to pay a 20% flat tax.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#133

Post by bigtimeidiot »

Cshelton wrote: post #106

I'm seeing many things (if this data is accurate, which assuming it is as it's from all government sources) and trends that go against a large percentage of what the media on both sides are perpetuating. That is my first takeaway at a glance. My second takeaway at a glance is the giant problem that is Social Security. It's been said over and over, and the aggregation of more data into charts comes to the same conclus…

>We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept.

Why is running a budget surplus necessarily a "good thing"?

Seems like if people are willing to trade real assets for paper, we should do that as long as there are willing counterparties.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#134

Post by Kawikap »

panarky wrote: post #17

This would be really powerful if it provided access to the original data sources. Imagine if you could analyze the results of public policy, with clean and detailed data, independently curated, without political or bureaucratic distortions. The US has 3,000 counties and 20,000 towns and cities, each one a petri dish of experiments in governance. Imagine what we could learn! From the NYT [1]: Want to know how many pol…

Government Finance data can be downloaded here: http://willamette.edu/mba/research_impact/public_datasets/in...

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#135

Post by ebbv »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #53
ebbv wrote: post #27

I'm actually more suspicious of anything claiming to be "non-partisan" than something that wears its foundational beliefs on its sleeves. At least if something says "We are a Libertarian non-profit" or "We are a Socialist non-profit" or something like that, I know better what specific grain of salt to use when reading its materials. Anything that claims to be non-profit is merely hiding the slant that its people have…

Fair point! I should hope raw numbers are truly unbiased, though they could still include more graphs that paint the picture they're wanting to paint. Note that i've not yet seen the site, even with http it's under a nearly dead load haha.

Unfortunately which data they choose to show and how they frame it makes a big difference. There are objective facts but we all color them intentionally or unintentionally despite our best efforts.

Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources

#137

Post by bigtimeidiot »

xienze wrote: post #113
Cshelton wrote: post #106

I'm seeing many things (if this data is accurate, which assuming it is as it's from all government sources) and trends that go against a large percentage of what the media on both sides are perpetuating. That is my first takeaway at a glance. My second takeaway at a glance is the giant problem that is Social Security. It's been said over and over, and the aggregation of more data into charts comes to the same conclus…

> We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept. The problem is that there are a lot of people who believe that SS isn't broken because you can simply increase retirement age, make people pay in more, and other assorted band-aids. SS will be "solvent" until it suddenly isn't, and people need to realize…

>SS will be "solvent" until it suddenly isn't, and people need to realize that.

And with a stroke of the pen, they'll make adjustments. SS isn't a real debt obligation; it's merely a "promise".

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