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Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

bloomberg.com

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Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

#21

Post by abduhl »

outside1234 wrote: post #12

I'll probably be unpopular, but it should be 100% of households. We are in denial that we can have all of the benefits we want and not raise taxes. The choices we have is: A) Cutting Medicare B) Cutting Social Security C) Cutting National Defense D) Raising Taxes Everything else is noise. Choose some combination of A-D. My choice is a 35% cut in C and D to cover the rest.

Cutting national defense entirely while raising taxes to 100% on the entire population would still mean a budget deficit by the middle of the 2030s due to the rate of growth of our social programs.

Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

#23

Post by jere »

smsm42 wrote: post #14
jere wrote: post #8

Let's be clear here. The deal means the bush era tax cuts remain for most people (a 3 percentage point reduction for most brackets), while we lose a temporary payroll tax for 2%: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-28/breaking-down-the-c... If I understand correctly, that means taxes should still be about 1% lower than they were during Clinton. I love how every time a temporary tax cut expires, we call it a "tax hi…

It IS a tax hike. Tax rates increase. The basic fact is: now, in January, tax rates are higher than they were last month, in December. No amount of renaming and shifting blame changes this basic fact. Taxes have gone up. Yes, there were times where taxes were even higher, so what? There also were times where women weren't allowed to vote, but we don't call denying a woman right to vote now "return to Lincoln-era free…

>You can not claim there was no tax hike - you're not entitled to your own facts.

Words have connotations too. Frankly, I don't know how to look up connotations so I can't be sure something isn't just in my head. But when I hear "hike", if nothing else "intentional" comes to mind. The automatic expiration of a tax cut doesn't seem to fit.

And I'll reiterate the question posed to Steko: do you call it a "price hike" when a sale ends?

Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

#24

Post by yummyfajitas »

rednukleus wrote: post #18
jug6ernaut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicare and Social Security are broken systems. Until you fix the problem you are only making it worse.

How do you propose to "fix" Social Security?

Index it to inflation rather than wages. Choose a fixed basket of goods, compute their price in the future, adjust SS accordingly.

I.e., cause SS to provide a fixed standard of living, rather than an increasing one. Seniors will always live as well in the future as they do today, they just won't live as well as future wage earners.

Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

#25

Post by smsm42 »

jonhinson wrote: post #10

The article makes it sound like the bill explicitly raises taxes on 77% of households. This would be false. The bill simply does not extend the temporary tax holiday that was signed into law at the end of 2010. The payroll tax rate goes back to the rate we've had since 1990.

"Your Honor, the prosecutor makes it sound as if I killed that man with a brick. Nothing could be farther from the truth - I just let the brick go, and some time later, completely independently from my actions and completely beyond my control, the brick fell onto the victim's skull and crushed it. I simply failed to extend my temporary holding over the brick, which I never promised to hold forever, by the way, and fully intended to let it go at some point. Clearly, I can accept no blame for this unfortunate incident and am completely innocent".

There was a tax reduction in 2010 and there is a tax hike in 2013. How adding word "temporary" to it changes anything?

Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

#26

Post by gte910h »

Steko wrote: post #11
jere wrote: post #8

Let's be clear here. The deal means the bush era tax cuts remain for most people (a 3 percentage point reduction for most brackets), while we lose a temporary payroll tax for 2%: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-28/breaking-down-the-c... If I understand correctly, that means taxes should still be about 1% lower than they were during Clinton. I love how every time a temporary tax cut expires, we call it a "tax hi…

The bottom line is taxes are going up from what people paid two weeks ago. Calling that a hike is not disingenuous to me. It's a bit linkbaity, yes. The payroll tax holiday was a stimulus measure that was never meant to be permanent, yes. We should not compound the long term issues with social security by chronically underfunding it, yes. It's a hike and one I'm perfectly happy to live with. As a commenter at metafil…

The reason some people don't want to call it a hike is that the passing of the law didn't cause it, it was a sunset baked into the old law.

Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

#27

Post by Steko »

jere wrote: post #13
Steko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottom line is taxes are going up from what people paid two weeks ago. Calling that a hike is not disingenuous to me. It's a bit linkbaity, yes. The payroll tax holiday was a stimulus measure that was never meant to be permanent, yes. We should not compound the long term issues with social security by chronically underfunding it, yes. It's a hike and one I'm perfectly happy to live with. As a commenter at metafil…

>The bottom line is taxes are going up from what people paid two weeks ago. Calling that a hike is not disingenuous to me. I'm not so sure. If a company has a huge sale for 1 month and everything is temporarily 50% off, we don't call it a 100% "price hike" the next month. Maybe it's just me, but hike has a very specific connotation that isn't appropriate here.

There's a subtle difference between a companies prices and taxes. If I only bought from one store every week and for 10 years I paid $1 for a loaf of bread and one day the bread cost $2 I would still feel justified in calling that a 100% price hike regardless of whether they had announced that the $1 price was temporary 10 years ago. I'll admit there's some wiggle room to argue price hike or not but I don't feel as if I'm the one jumping through all the hoops to make my case.

Full disclosure: I normally pay around $4 for a loaf of bread.

Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

#28

Post by chimeracoder »

jere wrote: post #13
Steko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottom line is taxes are going up from what people paid two weeks ago. Calling that a hike is not disingenuous to me. It's a bit linkbaity, yes. The payroll tax holiday was a stimulus measure that was never meant to be permanent, yes. We should not compound the long term issues with social security by chronically underfunding it, yes. It's a hike and one I'm perfectly happy to live with. As a commenter at metafil…

>The bottom line is taxes are going up from what people paid two weeks ago. Calling that a hike is not disingenuous to me. I'm not so sure. If a company has a huge sale for 1 month and everything is temporarily 50% off, we don't call it a 100% "price hike" the next month. Maybe it's just me, but hike has a very specific connotation that isn't appropriate here.

> If a company has a huge sale for 1 month and everything is temporarily 50% off, we don't call it a 100% "price hike" the next month.

No, but if they had that "sale" for over 10 years, rather than one month, then you might call it a price increase.

Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

#29

Post by anonymoushn »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #24
rednukleus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose to "fix" Social Security?

Index it to inflation rather than wages. Choose a fixed basket of goods, compute their price in the future, adjust SS accordingly. I.e., cause SS to provide a fixed standard of living, rather than an increasing one. Seniors will always live as well in the future as they do today, they just won't live as well as future wage earners.

Clamping the rate of growth of the spending to the rate of growth of the revenue is not a fix if the spending is already much higher than the revenue.

Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households

#30

Post by kilroy123 »

rednukleus wrote: post #18
jug6ernaut wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicare and Social Security are broken systems. Until you fix the problem you are only making it worse.

How do you propose to "fix" Social Security?

Maybe we should just do away with SS all together? Just pick a date 20-30 years from now, and cancel the program at that time.

I'm young (under 30) and I just assume it won't be around by the time I'm 65.

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