Funny that a site run by ex-Microsoft CEO doesn't use the MS stack:
https://builtwith.com/?https%3a%2f%2fusafacts.org
USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
291–300 of 359 posts
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#292I'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…
Social Security is perpetually misunderstood. It's working as designed.
Those surpluses that you're looking for were essentially just dumped on the federal balance sheet as non-marketable debt and spent on stuff like building aircraft carriers.
The "deficit" means that it's time to pay back those IOUs. It's pretty easily balance that -- you raise the threshold for payroll taxes and index it to inflation.
Flat tax is an awful, terrible idea. The reason that the 90% tax rates resulted in similar collection rates is that lots of things were deductible. All leases, most interest expenses. More people were essentially exempt from paying as well.
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#293Earlier 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 have literally never once heard or even heard of someone deciding to work less because they don't want to pay as much in taxes.
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or more precisely, by the lack of census data in years where no actual enumeration is performed. The big jumps on census years indicate that the census department does not estimate accurately when working with 9-year-old data.
What you're saying doesn't match the reality of what is actually shown in the graph at http://usafacts.org/metrics/12966 They aren't jumps suddenly correcting a bad estimate with new data. They are gigantic 25% spikes which are then immediately undone. There is no way to explain this chart by just saying that estimates worsen over time.
Births and deaths are derivatives. Thus a 25% spike is basically just an adjustment to reflect smaller (~2-3%) errors in the non-census years. To put numbers to this: imagine 100 people were born every year between 1991 and 2000, inclusive. The statistics only recorded 98 people being born every year, though. We then did a census, and discovered that the number of people <10 years old in 2000 was 1000 people, thus we recorded a number of births as 118 (since we thought that 882 people had been born so far in 1991-1999), and then back down to 100 in the next year.
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Woah there! You've basically just claimed that the laws of supply and demand don't have an impact in the labour market. That requires more evidence than finding a link between pay and intrinsic motivation/job security. Nobody is going to turn down a flat wage hike - but the damage of government tax policy is it shrinks the window of "what the company will pay for" and "what the worker will work for". Now we can't mea…
If your basic economic principle argument held much water, every investment banker would have moved to a lower tax locale decades ago.
The reality is that people weigh these costs against many factors and locales, clusters of business, family and institutions have powerful effects that add friction.
From a practical standpoint, the investment banker pulling in a $500k bonus in NYC with its 11.5% marginal tax rate doesn't move to New Hampshire because he'd take a 50% or more compensation haircut.
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
You guys should get out moore, no other country does this. If i work a year in say Australia I pay Australian taxes that year, and nothing in my home country (Denmark). Thats how the rest of the world works.
Don't forget about Eritrea.
http://www.internationalman.com/articles/this-appalling-prac...
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
It seems to me that we could eliminate a lot of that overhead if we stopped pretending that Social Security is insurance and just gave every retiree the same benefit. You would still need to keep track of who has reached retirement age, who has died, and where to send the checks, but you could get rid of a lot of arcane rules.
I guess the question is: how much would you save by firing 50k people, and how much would it cost you in claims getting awarded to people without real need?
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Changing the OS is fine, but there's only one way to do it: via constitutional amendment. Merely wanting it to say something different is not sufficient. The users have to follow the official enhancement process.
What I originally was trying to get at is how the Constitution has almost nothing to do with most of what the federal government actually does. It sets the boundaries of civil liberties, policy and procedure, federal authority, the separation of federal powers, and the differences between states and the federal government.
The Constitution is not an OS, or even a kernel - it is an access control policy. What the government actually does is implement that ACL. So when people invoke the constitution all the time, it's like saying "They're trying to download 10 gigabytes of data, but the ACLs!!!!!", when the ACLs don't have anything to do with disk quota. So this is my point: people keep bringing up the Constitution when it does not apply.
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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".
In a similar vein, nearly 10 years ago in Australia, a Mineral Rent Resource Tax (MRRT)[1] was proposed, wherein mining companies making a net profit of over 5% were taxed a bit extra on the amount over 5%. Of course the miners and their fans screamed bloody murder, and threatened to move offshore. Yeah, sure you guys are. You're going to move your profitable-by-definition business in a stable first-world country and away from working mines and supply chains.
Besides, miners mine where the minerals are; they don't move to Ireland and mine there because the taxes are low.
[1] One of the earlier names for the MRRT was the stonkingly-bad-PR move of calling it "Super Tax". It was meant to be a tax on 'super profits', but a) it sounds like an extra-powerful tax, and b) sounds like a tax on your superannuation.
Re: USA Facts – Federal, state, and local data from government sources
#300I'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…
> 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…
In practice; we currently have a very UN-progressive system. Where the very wealthy get excessive tax breaks, and pay even less than the middle and upper-middle class (who are getting fucking murdered: at least that's my experience).
Would a flat-tax fix this? In theory: but if we set that "flat tax" to 15-17%; (and simply pocket the cost savings from simplification of tax code) - that seems like a win. But the very poorest quintile can't pay that. (and are equipped to dodge that, by simply not working and collecting aid or taking black-market work - cash-basis labor, or selling drugs, etc.) - the top quintile will also have the means to avoid paying their fair share. As always.
It's those in the middle, who have to work REAL jobs, and can't hide their income though either black-market means, or tax-shelters: which still work in a flat-tax system.
The government will need to raise overall rates to compensate for this, and the middle gets screwed even more.
That's an IDEAL system.
In the REAL world: the wealthy will still lobby for special deductions.
Personally, I'd like to see the mortgage deduction go away for non-primary residences.
Stuff like "dancing-horses" deductions and the absolute murder "small businesses" get away with, (like; taking their personal Truck as a deduction, by calling it a "work truck") - that can be horse-traded around. But I think there is the most to be gained from the mortgage deduction on non-primary residences. This is probably America's most sacred cow. And therefore, is most likely politically impossible. This is why we've been at a stalemate over tax-reform since 1980.