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?
Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
31–40 of 69 posts
Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
#32An interesting read related to Medicare issues. It says that on average, "Medicare couple pays $109,000 into the program and gets $343,000 in benefits out"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/opinion/brooks-another-fis...
Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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" w…
Of course it's intentional. If they didn't intend for taxes to go up, they would not vote for legislation that is doing so. In fact, they did it twice - in 2010 andin 2012 - so they fully intended that there be a tax hike in 2013.
>>>> do you call it a "price hike" when a sale ends?
Of course. "Sale" is a marketing construct, there's no price but the actual deal price. Claiming that there's some other price, which just now, just for you, just this 5 minutes is not valid and another, much lower price, is now in effect but you have to hurry to buy it - is just a marketing trick. Amazon is running with "sale price" for decades now, and most of its "base prices" are pure fiction, and so do many other retailers. It is, obviously, very effective marketing trick - you fell for it completely and so do many others - but a trick nonetheless. There's no price but actual sale price. "End of sale" is a price hike.
Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If wages grow faster than inflation [1], then the revenue will rise faster than spending.
[1] Note that I chose a true inflation measure rather than chained CPI.
Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
#35Earlier 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. 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.
You do realize the payroll tax cut only lasted 2 years, right? Not only that, but I'm fairly certain it was enacted partly to counteract the recession, which by definition should only be temporary.
In the context of historically low taxes (the top rate used to be 94% and is now 35%), I think the sale analogy is much more apt.
Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
#36Earlier 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.
Of course it is. "50% off this month only" is exactly the same, in money terms, as "we intend to raise price of it 100% next month". Of course, the former sounds much better, which is why you never see the latter, even though it is exactly the same thing. People have very hard time applying logic to money, for some reason.
Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
#37Earlier 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?
Social Security is the easier to fix (IMHO). The nice thing about it is that it's a service for which there are a lot of examples. The basic premise that you put away money for your retirement and that money grows over time is pretty simple and sound. You could streamline it a bit to reduce overhead. Yes, the way it works now is somewhat broken (e.g.: I am not "saving" currently, but paying for people who are now retired, hoping that my grandchildren will pay for me), but in principle it needs only minor adjustments.
Medicare on the other hand is growing very rapidly and the broken healthcare system will only speed up its growth. I don't see a way to fix it without dismantling it and starting over. Not that I am in the Ryan camp: I am not advocating leaving seniors out in the cold. I am just saying that Medicare will require more than minor adjustments.
Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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" w…
Of course it's intentional. If they didn't intend for taxes to go up, they would not vote for legislation that is doing so. In fact, they did it twice - in 2010 andin 2012 - so they fully intended that there be a tax hike in 2013. >>>> do you call it a "price hike" when a sale ends? Of course. "Sale" is a marketing construct, there's no price but the actual deal price. Claiming that there's some other price, which ju…
>Of course it's intentional. If they didn't intend for taxes to go up, they would not vote for legislation that is doing so.
Are we talking about the same thing? Because I thought we were discussing a law that would automatically expire without intervention.
If there was no legislation being voted on right now, it would still expire.
Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
#39Earlier 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 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.
Arguing over labels is a red herring. Is it a hike? Maybe. Who cares? Many reasonable people might say it's a hike, so don't hide from that or try and split hairs. At the end of the day it's the right thing to do... so do it, even if it's a hike.
Re: Senate-Passed Deal Means Higher Tax on 77% of Households
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Social Security isn't hard to keep going at all. The idea that SS is in some sort of crisis is a complete myth.
"cancel the program at that time."
Yeah ummm, no. This program exists for a reason and it isn't going anywhere. If anything it needs to be strengthened.