taxes
mikethemadbiologist | April 20, 2007Hopefully, talking about Social Security will be marginally less inflamatory than evolution or global warming, and it illustrates many of the points made in various discussions. First, though, I want to clear the deck about some misconceptions about Social Security (I have a lot of the links here and here, so I won't repeat them below):
1) Social Security will most likely be solvent in perpetuity without any need for tax increases or benefit cuts. No, really. For even marginal tax or benefit alterations, the economy has to grow at a rate about 20% lower than the average U.S. historical…
mikethemadbiologist | April 16, 2007I found two good posts about taxes: one describes why we need them, and the other describes how much of your taxes go to pay for something you probably don't even think about.
First, the 'mystery' budget item: servicing the interest payments on the federal debt. From hilzoy (italics mine):
Total Receipts: 2,407
Total Outlays: 2654
Total Deficit: 248
Total Spent On Debt Service: 405.9
-- Yes, that's right: had we simply paid our bills on time, more or less, we would not only not be running a deficit, we would have $157.9 billion dollars to either refund to taxpayers or spend on some new…
mikethemadbiologist | February 22, 2007...El Jefe Maximo is still pushing the elimination of the estate tax because the offspring of the ludicrously wealthy need a break:
If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.
The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.
Or how about this: if the Estate Tax goes, the heirs to the Mars candy corporation -- some of the world's evilest scumbags, incidentally, routinely ripped by human rights…
mikethemadbiologist | January 23, 2007Let's just say, for sake of argument, that Bush's proposed tax plan for healthcare would actually lower premiums. There's something rather obvious that his plan seems to miss.
If insurers make less money through premiums, they will find other ways to recoup their diminished income.
How would they do this? Here are three ways, all of which are happening now, so they can't be viewed as far-fetched:
1) People with pre-existing conditions won't be accepted by private plans.
2) More and more procedures will be defined as 'non-essential', so they will not be covered (note: this also includes…
mikethemadbiologist | December 31, 2006Finally, there might be a Democrat who speaks my language about deficits and budgets. From Tapped (italics and bold mine):
I think the honest answer to this question is that there's a tension between our desire to eliminate the deficit and create a stronger economic foundation and eliminate some of the debt our children will inherit, there's a tension between that deficit and our need to invest and make America stronger for the 21st century.
I think that, if we're honest, you cannot it, it's just common sense in the math, have universal health care, and invest in energy, and make a serious…
mikethemadbiologist | December 19, 2006Thomas Geoghan has an excellent article about the need to raise taxes. He makes a very important point: how we tax ourselves defines who we are. Geoghan writes (italics mine):
Sociologists claim someone making $50,000 a year, or $25,000 a year believes: I can be like Gates or Soros. Or my kids will be.
It's burned into our brains that Americans believe this.
I have a question: In your own life, do you know anyone out there in a suburb with a mortgage who believes this? I sometimes go out to barbecues and parties with clients, and I think of "businessmen" and guys in sales and ask myself, "…
mikethemadbiologist | November 27, 2006To avoid possible brain damage, the Surgeon General recommends that Sebastian Mallaby's columns only be read using the StupidVu 9000
Someone needs to tell Bush that when I wrote a post titled "Democrats Crush GOP; Bush Declares 'Mandate'", I was joking. Now that El Jefe Maximo has psychologically disinvested from the Iraqi Occupation, he has decided that the message the American electorate sent in the 2006 elections was "You've done such a great job with foreign policy, FEMA, and the budget deficit, we would really like you to screw up Social Security."
Really, Bush is once again, after…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2006Recent estimates suggest that the dollar cost of the Iraq War and Occupation will be over two trillion dollars. The horrible irony is that, had Bush not fought this war--or very quickly declared democracy and 'cut and run'--the amount of money Bush would have added to the federal debt would have been substantially smaller (the debt would have increased, however). In other words, his stupid war/occupation undercut his stupid ecconomic policies. Maybe that's why conservatives are jumping ship...
mikethemadbiologist | October 12, 2006I've stayed away from the whole religious organization tax breaks issue, mostly because others have dealt with it. But this NY Times article about the parsonage exemption pisses me off to no end (the parsonage exemption allows workers for religious organizations to deduct the cost of their housing). Here's why: I work for a secular non-profit so I don't get to deduct my rent (with the tax deduction, I would be refunded three months of rent). Quoth the Grey Lady:
He did not address the pastoral poverty argument in his court briefs, but in an interview, he noted that poorly paid inner-city…
mikethemadbiologist | October 10, 2006I'm no fan of tax expenditures. I'm not even particularly fond of most tax deductions regardless of whether or not they're based on religion. Taxes should be about raising revenue, and a complex tax code just makes inserting more loopholes--as well as outright cheating--even more possible. If conservatives were actually serious about shrinking government, they would make the Treasury write checks rather than give tax rebates.
Anyway, the Republicans have decided how they will tackle the deficit: they're going to remove the NCAA's tax-exempt status. It's not clear that the NCAA should be…
mikethemadbiologist | September 1, 2006
Here's what the mayor of Salt Lake City, UT said yesterday. You would think he's one of those Northeast liberal elitist, latte-drinkin' types...
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Jackson:
A patriot is a person who loves his or her country.
Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here today to raise your voice out of deep concern for our nation - and for our world?
And who among you loves your country so much that you insist that our nation's leaders tell us the truth?
Let's hear it: "Give us the truth! Give us the truth! Give us the truth!"
Let no one deny we are patriots. We…
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2006The NY Times has an article about how real wages are not keeping pace with productivity increases. Quoth the Grey Lady:
With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.
That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year's midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years.
The median hourly wage for American workers…
mikethemadbiologist | August 1, 2006...that conservatives don't have to face reality, they can just invent their own? DeLong writes about one delusional tax 'plan' (italics mine):
There is a serious issue here: When one does policy evaluation of the proposals of an administration, does one evaluate the effects of the policies that the administration has proposed? Or does one evaluate the effects of the policies that the administration has proposed plus policies that the administration has not proposed, shows no inclination to propose, but that one wishes it would propose?
I think the italicized part explains how so many have…
mikethemadbiologist | July 29, 2006...to give Paris Hilton a tax cut on money she never earned. Over at DailyKos, David Grossman comments on the Republicans' attempt to permanently repeal the estate tax:
So the Republicans in the U.S. House stayed up until almost 2am tonight to give Paris Hilton some extra money (there's something funny about millions of dollars being showered on Paris Hilton in the dead of night, but I'll leave that joke for someone else to finish).
How much extra money? Try a cool $91,089,200.
Read the whole post to find out more (and try not to vomit).
Any Democrat who fails to use this for political…