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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

#161

Post by dota_fanatic »

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.

So (rich) people are living longer... does that mean they are as productive, longer? Just because they're alive longer doesn't mean they can work as well in their 70s as they used to. There's also the whole ageism thing to consider. How hard is it to get a job in your 60s. How about if you're 70? 75?

The people with the lowest life expectancy are those that need SS the most, yet you're suggesting they not be able to receive it until after they're likely to be dead.

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

#162

Post by stdbrouw »

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…

You spent five minutes looking at some charts and can now confidently state that (1) the media has got it all wrong and that (2) you've figured out how to avoid deficits, how taxes should really work and the problem with social security.

The word "hubris" comes to mind.

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

#163

Post by tunesmith »

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 think this is a case of seeing what you want to see. According to the Trustees Report, SS is only in deficit if you don't factor in interest income. [1] It's projected to deplete its trust fund in 2034. Please resist the urge to argue that the trust fund doesn't exist. That 2034 date can easily be extended through minor tweaks, check out any of the ideas from the late Robert M. Ball.

The flat tax is regressive. Regressive is bad because the value of money is roughly logarithmic as it increases. Any plans to make the flat tax "less regressive" is an argument against a flat tax. A simplified tax code is a good idea. It is quite possible to have a simpler tax code that is more progressive. Yet I find that flat tax proponents tend not to be in favor of that.

[1] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/

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

#164

Post by ceejay »

code_duck wrote: post #119
killjoywashere wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are stories of doctors prescribing food to malnourished children and Medicaid refusing to pay, saying "Food is not medicine."

That makes sense to me since there are other programs which exist specifically to provide food assistance.

Although that point of view appears to miss the point. It appears the inability to pay for food with the health budget would hide / obfuscate the data that might have otherwise shown a direct correlation between malnutrition and poor health.

Sure you could read a study to get the same information, but unless your own data screams to you what the problem is it's not always easy to convince folks you should be doing anything about it.

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

#165

Post by ashark »

cookiecaper wrote: post #115
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Constitution limits the Federal government. One can therefore say that government programs that are outside the scope stated by the Constitution are outside the legitimate scope of the Federal government. The Tenth Amendment is pretty clear: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Now, I kno…

Beyond the intent, the plain meaning of the text is clear. If the power is not explicitly enumerated as belonging to the federal government, it is reserved to the states. At most, this would allow the federal government to implement a policy based on a non-enumerated power, which state legislatures could then override. Only powers explicitly enumerated would be binding across the Union. Telecommunication has really c…

Without kind-of ignoring the limitations of the constitution, we'd likely have had an Articles of Confederation style crisis at some point, and had to replace (or heavily amend) the Constitution since then. Which would be better than kind-of ignoring it from our perspective, though not from that of the people who had to live through said crisis.

As it is, we de facto ignore the parts that would screw up operating a modern nation-state, the "must preserve the independence of states!" wing gets to not-vote for amendments that de jure reduce said independence in order to let things actually work well/sanely, and no-one has to live through a crisis bad enough to get that wing to abandon their position. So... win/win if you're happy with a local maximum, I guess?

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

#166

Post by lloyd-christmas »

peterwwillis wrote: post #159
brianberns wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

It's all fun and games until you're forced to download Security Patch NSA.2017

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

#167

Post by Tloewald »

Cshelton wrote: post #130
shmageggy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lastly, it seems that Government revenue for Federal and State/Local has actually increased pretty linearly with the population. 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 Feder…

I think you would have to look at the reasons why the government tax revenue did not increase when rates were higher. The rich are have mobility. They can move money around the world and at high tax rate levels, they'd be content on neither earning nor bringing back any of the money they make elsewhere. Let's take an example of Apple's $200 B sitting offshore. I know that's a corporate tax, but same principal. I don'…

"I don't believe the tax burden on the lower classes in the US has ever been lessened by increased rates at the top levels."

Every dollar of extra tax paid by the wealthy is a dollar of tax that doesn't need to be paid by the non-wealthy. Your belief notwithstanding.

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

#168

Post by bahmboo »

pwaivers wrote: post #105
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 )

Similarly, this chart says there are only 2,000-4,000 teachers in K-12 education: http://usafacts.org/metrics/34211 . This is obviously not true.

Most likely missing scale. Probably in thousands.

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

#169

Post by spitfire »

Unfortunately they only give references to their sources, rather than the actual original sources. This might be hard to recreate. Perhaps even impossible.

I imagine Steve Balmer opens more doors and gets more cooperation than any of us here would get in accessing the same data.

Edit: It seems they're in the process of documenting the processes and methods they used to obtain their datasets. When this is released it could be a very useful tool.

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

#170

Post by ZoeZoeBee »

tunesmith wrote: post #163
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 think this is a case of seeing what you want to see. According to the Trustees Report, SS is only in deficit if you don't factor in interest income. [1] It's projected to deplete its trust fund in 2034. Please resist the urge to argue that the trust fund doesn't exist. That 2034 date can easily be extended through minor tweaks, check out any of the ideas from the late Robert M. Ball. The flat tax is regressive. Reg…

The time for fixing Social Security with "minor tweaks" has passed, the problem moving forward is Demographics

>Social Security's total income is projected to exceed its total cost through 2019, as it has since 1982. The 2015 surplus of total income relative to cost was $23 billion. However, when interest income is excluded, Social Security's cost is projected to exceed its non-interest income throughout the projection period, as it has since 2010. The Trustees project that this annual non-interest deficit will average about $69 billion between 2016 and 2019. It will then rise steeply as income growth slows to its sustainable trend rate as the economic recovery is complete while the number of beneficiaries continues to grow at a substantially faster rate than the number of covered workers.

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