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

usafacts.org

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

#211

Post by kbenson »

schoen wrote: post #203
kbenson wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please explain how flat tax rate across any income level, while removing the current tax code, would be considered regressive? I have not heard that argument before. It's regressive in that it causes the poor to pay more than they do now. With regard to taxes, progressive and regressive have specific meaning. > The proportion of tax paid is the same at any income level. I don't believe this is true. You'll have to…

> It's regressive in that it causes the poor to pay more than they do now. With regard to taxes, progressive and regressive have specific meaning. Under that meaning, a flat tax is the border between progressive and regressive taxation. It is not an example of a regressive tax. Increasing the amount that poor people pay makes a tax scheme relatively more regressive, but if it's no more regressive than a flat tax, it'…

> Under that meaning, a flat tax is the border between progressive and regressive taxation.

That depends entirely how you measure. If you measure by total income, then yes. If you measure by income after necessities for living are accounted for, then a very simple progressive tax that takes that into consideration might be considered the baseline, and a flat tax that doesn't take that into consideration could be considered regressive. On the other end of the spectrum, if you make people account for all subsidized government services used and count that as income, then a flat tax is progressive. Without an agreement on the baseline for measurement (which I believe is where a lot of people start disagreeing), you can't even necessarily agree on what is progressive and regressive.

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

#212

Post by justanotheratom »

moondrops wrote: post #194
justanotheratom wrote: post #178

There is a Visas granted metric. But it is not clear if that is just any type of visa? I would be interested in number of citizenships granted. http://usafacts.org/metrics/25906

you're in luck :D that exists under the metric "naturalizations", which describes the process of acquiring citizenship. http://usafacts.org/metrics/13058

Aah fancy word, thanks. That number seems smaller than I expected.

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

#213

Post by tptacek »

Cshelton wrote: post #199
stdbrouw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, I'll bite... briefly. A.) I spent more than five minutes. Regardless, I stated at "at a glance". B.) I did not say the media has it all wrong. I said many things, NOT ALL, perpetuated by both sides in the media are different than the data from government sources. I don't think anybody would argue that both sides, especially recently, have had media reports that sketch and bend the truth. And both sides just claim…

I don't even understand the argument you've made. From your original comment, it appears that you dove into a site full of graphs, came up with "405 billion shortfall", and declared the program imperiled. I can't find that number on the site (I may have spent less time looking than you did) and it doesn't square with the Trustees report or, for that matter, with the conventional wisdom that Social Security is probably not our big problem --- relatively small, long-overdue fixes to SSDI will more or less resolve budget concerns there --- but instead Medicare.

Your comment at the top of this thread is sort of a perfect illustration of the problems of sites like these.

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

#214

Post by abeyer »

minot wrote: post #173
Cshelton wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I'll be frank. I have no reason to believe anyone is honest (not even myself). While we like to say that we are not savage animals, we are. CGP Grey made a video https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs?t=1072 based on The Dictator's Handbook I read an article on some online magazine which argued that the…

> Just to put things in simple terms, this $200B does not include money Apple made by selling iPhones in the US, right? It only includes money Apple made by selling iPhones in other countries? I don't get why we obsess so much over it. US economy is large enough. If they want to bring this money back to the US or they want to give money to their owners/stock holders, they can pay the tax at that time? I don't have a horse in this race. I am just trying to understand the premise as an outsider.

As an American citizen, I'm still subject to federal income tax, even on income earned while I'm residing outside the country, for work done entirely outside the country, for a non-American employer. That being the case, I see no reason why similar rules shouldn't apply to American corporations. If we say an individual still derives services and value from their citizenship even when outside the country, and thus needs to pay in to support that, why not also American businesses?

I don't know enough about business structures and tax code to say _how_ to make it happen, but from a sense of fairness, I think that roughly equitable rules for business and individual entities is a good thing.

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

#215

Post by _rpd »

rplst8 wrote: post #193

What the heck is this? http://usafacts.org/metrics/11699

I believe it is the number, in thousands, of US persons aged 25 and over having an 8th grade education or higher.

As scraped from this web site ...

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_104.30.a...

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

#216

Post by abeyer »

schoen wrote: post #201
tunesmith wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 flat tax is regressive. Strictly speaking, a flat tax is the border between progressive and regressive taxation and is neither progressive nor regressive.

I think that's only true in a very academic sense.

Ideally you would want to exclude the expenses incurred to sustain a reasonable minimum quality of life and only consider taxation on income in excess of that. A truly flat tax rate is still regressive in the sense that it is a significantly higher burden on that expendable income at the lower end of the scale.

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

#217

Post by vermontdevil »

_pastel wrote: post #208

Can anyone give me some intuition into why 77k people are employed by the Social Security Administration? [1] That's bigger than Google, and I didn't think their scope was that wide. [1] http://usafacts.org/government-finances/employment?compariso... under "Secure the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and Our Posterity". The combined count is "n/a" - maybe that's because the State & Local count has some overlap with…

There are SSA offices all over the country that actually meet people. Lots of older voting public that demands this.

Same reason why we still have post offices in tiny towns.

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

#218

Post by patrickmay »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #181
xienze wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Those making $250K and up are responsible for 51.6% of all income tax revenue. How much more should they be expected to contribute? And this is what is so annoying about groups complaints about the wealthy paying taxes. The heavy reliance on misleading statistics. The quote says a specific group pays 51% of all tax revenue and says it's way too much. Well did they collect 51% of all income? An entire article that n…

> The quote says a specific group pays 51% of all tax revenue and says it's way too much. Well did they collect 51% of all income?

Did they get 51% of all the benefits of how that money was spent?

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

#219

Post by Cshelton »

weaksauce wrote: post #183
tertius wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

That is still regressive. A truly progressive tax system would be similar to what we have now but with much fewer deductions that the affluent can use to lower their effective tax rate. (Oft cited that warren buffet has a lower effective tax rate than his secretary because of all the deductions and loopholes.) Not to mention that there is a huge misunderstanding of how progressive tax rates work. A very affluent busi…

The point that the businessman was trying to make is not that he misunderstands how marginal tax rates work, but for the next dollar I'm going to earn, I now get to keep less. My incentive to earn the NEXT dollar is therefore less.

This is exactly why we don't have a tax rate on the top bracket of 90% like in the Eisenhower era. It's not about being taxed on all your money when you make over that amount, it is, where is the incentive to grow my self or my company if I only get to keep $0.10 of the next dollar I make.

Most people who pay multiple tax rates across brackets understand how it works.

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

#220

Post by tptacek »

_pastel wrote: post #208

Can anyone give me some intuition into why 77k people are employed by the Social Security Administration? [1] That's bigger than Google, and I didn't think their scope was that wide. [1] http://usafacts.org/government-finances/employment?compariso... under "Secure the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and Our Posterity". The combined count is "n/a" - maybe that's because the State & Local count has some overlap with…

"Bigger than Google" isn't an interesting metric. A better comparison would be to other insurance companies: Progressive Insurance has ~30k, Allstate ~43k, and State Farm ~70k.

Roughly half of Social Security's workforce consists of insurance administrators, who respond to and adjudicate claims and set individual citizens up with their benefits. Unlike State Farm, basically every American interfaces in some way with Social Security.

Again, an example of how a site full of numbers and line graphs can mislead by failing to provide context, while pretending to present a complete picture.

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