321–330 of 359 posts
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More wonderful fact: Government employes 24 million people. This include state and federal and all jobs paid for by government such as teachers. So about 1 in every 6 person works for government.
Number of "people" in the us: 318.9 million (2014) => more like 1 in 13. Also, I'm pretty sure that 24 million figure includes the military.
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Number of "people" in the us: 318.9 million (2014) => more like 1 in 13. Also, I'm pretty sure that 24 million figure includes the military.
Only about 150 million americans actually work [1] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat08.htm
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In practice a 20% flat tax on all people and corporations without exceptions and deductions would be more progressive than the current system. The wealthy pay very little taxes.
In 2015, the top 20% paid 84% of collected income tax. That would hardly qualify as little taxes.
Increasing taxes on them would hardly qualify as hardship. The utility of a dollar is much lower when you have ~$300,000 in savings (80th percentile), then when you have ~$300 in savings (20th percentile).
Related anecdote: With an annual income of ~$250-300,000, my net tax rate, including untaxable benefits and investment income is the same as that of my partner - who makes ~$30-40,000. If I had an income of $2,500,000, it would be substantially lower.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
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If you drill down to any individual metric, e.g. http://usafacts.org/metrics/12892 it says "Sources for this data are coming soon" & "Download coming soon". Give them some time, they just launched.
thats pretty important... The entire point of this thing is to be transparent.
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> 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…
How does any of this make sense?
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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…
While most of what you said is spot on, people often misunderstand what constitutes the super rich group with big tax breaks. It's way less than one percent, because it's the big investment money that's getting out of so much taxation. People who earn high salaries are actually paying quite substantial taxes. For some perspective, "the 1%" starts at about $350k annual salary (think middle-of-the-pack surgeon.) At tha…
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> 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…
That's not really true. 99.9% of the tax system is progressive[1] and the middle (14% effective tax rate on 59k annual) and upper middle (17.5% on 95k) classes pay less than the highest quintile (27% on 260k). Even the top 1% (35% on 1,570k) pays fairly reasonably, although capital gains eats into that- it would be closer to 45% if it was taxed at the same rate.
The real problem is the .1%, the people who's annual income is in the hundreds of millions. These are athletes/actors and "businessmen" who are really just investors in their own company, and they form two distinct taxpayers. The athletes/actors pay rates ranging from 20% to 35%. The ultrarich businessmen are heavily clustered around 10-20%. So heavily that both groups together paid an average rate of 16.62%[2] in 2007. That's just... incredibly insane.
I think part of the opposition to fixing this problem comes from framing it as a middle class issue. It's not even a middle class + rich issue, it's an issue for even the extremely rich. It's not an "us vs. CEOs" issue. It's "everybody vs a subset of the richest thousand people". There isn't an income level above which you are the enemy, the enemy is all of the people who skirt by paying taxes. Long term capital gains taxes are too low and ultrarich tax loopholes are abused liberally.
[1]: see page 35 of this CBO report- https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...
[2]: page 10 of this IRS report: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07intop400.pdf
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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.
Depending on the estimate, the most recent census data might not be fully incorporated into the model until several years following the census? I can't look at your link at the moment because the corporate firewall is currently blocking the domain. But there really isn't any way to get around the fact that real census data are only collected once every 10 years (and the 1890 census was burned, so that point is missin…
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1996/spring/1...
Dear USA Facts team, we would like to offer you few hints for public spending visualizations based on our experience. We are the creators of https://us.wikibudgets.org/w/united-states-budget-2016 . - Government spending is only a small part of the public finance. People need to see all public organisations: states and cities, departments, offices, bureaus and agencies, schools, hospital and prisons and obviously all…
This kind of presentation of critical data is just awesome. Thanks so much for putting this together.
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…
More wonderful fact: Government employes 24 million people. This include state and federal and all jobs paid for by government such as teachers. So about 1 in every 6 person works for government.
I wonder how many of those think the government should get our of their lives?
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/192361/unadjusted-monthl...