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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

#241

Post by Cshelton »

tptacek wrote: post #230
programbreeding wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not. I took them directly from USAFacts[0], and according to their methodologies[1], they have not adjusted for inflation either. [0] http://usafacts.org/government-finances/spending?comparison=... [1] http://usafacts.org/methodology

Wait, none of these graphs are in constant dollars? How are we meant to read them?

Some charts and graphs are inflation adjusted, others aren't. You have to find it for each one.

And yes, some are in thousands, some in millions, and some are actual. On a large report like this with many different metrics, expecting them all to be scaled the same would make many hard to read.

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

#243

Post by tptacek »

patrickmay wrote: post #218
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It's hard to say, but anyone who is a part of a demographic minority that has collected 51% of all the income in a country's economy has clearly gotten some additional benefits.

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

#244

Post by grandalf »

By restricting the project to data provided by governments there is absolutely zero chance of much additional accountability being offered by this platform.

I think all recipients of public funds should be required to account for all spending per hour, project and employee, and should also publish highly granular KPI and transactional data.

I don't necessarily want to see a 10-K, I want access to google analytics, the ERP system, and the financial ledger.

It should be possible for anyone with a copy of OpenOffice to determine the cost of the top 10% of patients at any public hospital, the cost of all high level "missions" the US Military is involved in, and the Federal employees who have received the most disciplinary action (or the most complaints).

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

#245

Post by tptacek »

Cshelton wrote: post #240
tptacek wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your argument here either. "Jumps during 2000-2010 were due to 'the economic recession'. Which was during 'the Obama administration'"? * There was more than one recession in the time period you're talking about. * The Great Recession did not in fact start during the Obama administration. * There was a recession at the beginning of Bush's term and at the end of it, but most of Bush's term occurred d…

You misread many things in my comment. Go through each of your points here and re-read what I said. 1. The 2001 was recession was minuscule to the 2008/09 one. 2. I never once said the recession "started" during his administration, I said the recession was during, that's it. Big difference. 3-4. The entire point was that the majority of the increases between the years of 2000-2010 were most likely between 2008-2010.…

None of this clarifies your argument or answers any of the questions I asked. I literally don't understand the argument you're trying to make, and because I'm a nerd like most of the people here, there's a siren in my brain going off over it. Can you try to reword your argument more precisely?

It sounds to me like you made a statement in your original comment that was straightforwardly refuted, and I'm trying hard to understand how anything you replied to that refutation with changes anything. You claimed there was an "unprecedented" rise in food stamp benefits during the Obama administration. No, that's not at all the case, right?

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

#246

Post by yourapostasy »

Is there some common data feed interchange format that can share arbitrary data feeds in arbitrary structures between data sources like this and statistical programs like R or data analysis programs like Mathematica (or Wolfram Alpha)? Kind of like a CSV for the web age?

A use case I'm thinking of as an example is on the data source web site I construct a data feed that is represented by a URI to a data feed, consisting of say headers, columns and rows in a table data structure. I paste the URI into R, which pulls it over the wire and then analyzes the data, instead of me downloading the feed and massaging the data into a format ingestible by R. Ideally the format comes out of the box supporting some common data structures like tables and directed graphs, and lets users/developers create their own data structures.

Bonus points for the format supporting differential, incremental updates of previously-downloaded cached feeds.

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

#247

Post by anarazel »

patrickmay wrote: post #218
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

More, quite possibly. They're likely using infrastructure more heavily (primarily due to the way they make money), they more likely to rely on subsidized work by others (employing people on medicaid etc, because they're not provided health care via employer)...

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

#248

Post by mason240 »

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…

>Please resist the urge to argue that the trust fund doesn't exist.

Except it doesn't. The only way to for SS to collect from the trust fund is from the general fund. That means that in order for SS to get $1 from the general fund:

A) Raise non-SS taxes $1 to go into the general fund.

B) Cut $1 of other spending from the general fund.

C) Increase the deficit by $1

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

#249

Post by clairity »

tptacek wrote: post #237
clairity wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My second takeaway at a glance is the giant problem that is Social Security. [...] A $405 B shortfall on SS in 2015. If that was at least half, we would actually not be running a deficit. We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ yes, the first step is to remove the cap on social security withholdin…

There's lots of simple things to do to address Social Security's budget, including modest raises in retirement age, means-testing benefits, and changing the way we collect FICA taxes (FICA is itself a flat tax, which is kind of silly, and the withholding cap is a travesty).

for sure. it's just that removing the cap is simple to understand and legislate, and is widely supported--around 80% of all americans. unfortunately that 80% doesn't include the majority of congress critters.

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

#250

Post by rqebmm »

amscanne wrote: post #202
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…

> This seems like a pretty poor argument for a flat tax and in fact could be seen as an argument against it. If raising top end bracket taxes didn't increase overall income, then it must be the case that it reduced the tax burden on lower incomes -- which is the entire point of progressive taxes. So progressive taxes work, let's keep them! Not necessarily. That would be true if the absolute $$$ collected were the sam…

> Say 4 of the high earners stop working as much (since their marginal rates are so high).

I know you're just using this as an example, but it begs a question I've struggled with: is there any actual proof that marginal tax rates reduce productivity in high earners?

On its face it makes perfect micro-economic sense, but that's like saying a cache will never miss or a cow is perfectly spherical. It just doesn't match up with real life experience. I've never once heard someone say "well, I'd ask for that raise, but they're going to take so much in taxes it's just not worth the effort".

Anecdotally it hasn't changed my motivations one lick as I've moved up tax brackets, to the point that I recently joked with my dad "I guess I'm done trying now!" when I stopped qualifying for a certain tax credit after I'd negotiated hard for a nice raise.

Not-so-anecdotally there's plenty of research that has shown that money (in and of itself) is a terrible motivating factor[0].

[0] https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv

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