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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

#151

Post by programbreeding »

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…

>A quick third take away seems to be the unprecedented rise in non-cash government aid (food stamps) during the Obama administration. The data is there, needs more analyzing of course.

I'm not sure you can say it like that. It went up 2.13x from 1980 to 1990, 1.43x from 1990 to 2000, 1.93x from 2000 to 2010, and 1.07x from 2010 to 2015.

There was a big jump of 1.93x from 2000 to 2010, but that is only 2 years of Obama's first term. What really happened there is likely the housing crisis/market crash in 2008. I don't see how that's related to Obama. It only went up 1.07x (the lowest amount for each of the 10-year segments) for the remainder of his term, and it made a higher jump from 1980 to 1990.

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

#152

Post by tertius »

xienze wrote: post #131
Joeri wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Just one simple example would be that there is an untaxed amount, let's say $25k (or whatever the poverty level is) and everything above is 20%.

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

#153

Post by JediWing »

xienze wrote: post #131
Joeri wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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.

It is a bad thing. In low-income households, there is less disposable income. In that case, taxes eat into the cost of necessities (or near-necessities such as broadband for those with slightly higher income). On the other end of the spectrum, for those with large incomes that income is largely disposable.

Dollars are dollars, sure, but there is a distinction to be made between taxing someone's food money and someone's Rolls Royce #2 money.

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

#154

Post by tertius »

bigtimeidiot wrote: post #133
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.

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

That's why it's a good thing. Because we don't want to run out of "as long as."

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

#155

Post by ariwilson »

programbreeding wrote: post #151
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…

>A quick third take away seems to be the unprecedented rise in non-cash government aid (food stamps) during the Obama administration. The data is there, needs more analyzing of course. I'm not sure you can say it like that. It went up 2.13x from 1980 to 1990, 1.43x from 1990 to 2000, 1.93x from 2000 to 2010, and 1.07x from 2010 to 2015. There was a big jump of 1.93x from 2000 to 2010, but that is only 2 years of Obam…

Are those numbers inflation adjusted?

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

#156

Post by ballenf »

kzrdude wrote: post #141
xienze wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Retirement age must increase. People are living longer than when retirement pensions were first designed. It was easy to introduce, people weren't expected to live that long then and now they do.

And it could be changed so gradually that no one near retirement age or who has started planning significantly for it is affected. Even a glacial rate of change would help -- one month later every year for the next few generations. And delay the start by a few years.

Point is to make changes without giving any cohesive group a strong reason to organize opposition. Or to have a strong moral argument that it was promised them.

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

#157

Post by pacaro »

bigtimeidiot wrote: post #133
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.

Always running a surplus is presumably as bad a thing as always running a deficit, but if you can run a surplus On sunny days, then you don't need austerity measures on rainy days

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

#158

Post by wfunction »

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…

> 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.

Examples?

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

#159

Post by peterwwillis »

brianberns wrote: post #147
peterwwillis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the obsession people have with the Constitution? It seems like some people believe all new laws shouldn't exist if they're not in the Constitution.

I think there's a pretty good analogy to be made between legislation and software. The Constitution is the "operating system" of the US government, and the laws are "applications" that run on that OS. If an application attempts to do something not permitted by the OS, it should be an error.

So, the system is full of users, each of whom want different features to be supported by the OS. And some features are needed to protect subsets of the users, while other users not so much. What seems to be happening is, some of the users don't want certain features implemented. In order to stop these features, they are claiming that the OS design specifically forbids these features.

But the OS is software. And the users collectively pay the contractors who write the software, and they can change it to say anything they want it to say, because the users are paying for it, and using it. Unlike religion, the design is not literally written in stone. The designers were well educated on the history of OS design, and knew that designs change over time. So their design allows for modifications without a total rewrite - something they saw as a feature.

So it seems to me the arguments and proclamations made by some users that "It's not in the design!!!" are equivalent to those made by, say, systemd opponents. There's a lot of people (myself included) that do not want systemd in their OS. But if all the other users vote and want systemd in the OS, I will capitulate and learn to deal with it.

We shouldn't get so caught up in the damn kernel or OS that we stop improving the whole system.

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

#160

Post by pwaivers »

phonon wrote: post #97
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #18

Before anyone goes putting a ton of trust in these charts... Compare the following: http://usafacts.org/metrics/31815 vs http://usafacts.org/metrics/12966 In the second chart half a million more people decide to die every 10th year? ( imgur link to screenshots in case the links don't work: http://imgur.com/a/tY02j )

They probably were using death rates and multiplying by population (which gets readjusted every census.) Definitely a FIXME.

This would not result in the spikes that we are seeing. If it was a readjusted population, then the number would rise sharply every tens years and stay up.
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