Social Security: Near-Bankrupt

[Tech_Esq]

So the poor guy who makes $1,000,000 a year has to fork over $600,000 leaving him and his family with a lousy $400,000.

How will they ever get by on that?

As if this only impact people that make a million dollars a year.

The "rich" start at $250,000. There are a lot more families living between $250,000 and $500,000 that will get hit with this than $1,000,000 so talk about the real impact not the, who-cares oddball impact.

You're going to expect families to live on less than $100,000 after having made over $250,000. Why should they bust their ass to do it? Risk having nothing, just to give it all over to the government? A question more and more people will be asking next year.

Please, you're breaking my heart. How will they ever they ever squeak by on that? The poor unfortunates.

Bet you'd feel different if it was your money that was flying out the window.

Good thing you just muck out barns and don't have to worry about ever making much money. But, if you do, it's nice to know that you will have supported the government keeping you in poverty.

 

[Mr Natural]

As if this only impact people that make a million dollars a year.

The "rich" start at $250,000. There are a lot more families living between $250,000 and $500,000 that will get hit with this than $1,000,000 so talk about the real impact not the, who-cares oddball impact.

You're going to expect families to live on less than $100,000 after having made over $250,000. Why should they bust their ass to do it? Risk having nothing, just to give it all over to the government? A question more and more people will be asking next year.

Please, you're breaking my heart. How will they ever they ever squeak by on that? The poor unfortunates.

Bet you'd feel different if it was your money that was flying out the window.

Good thing you just muck out barns and don't have to worry about ever making much money. But, if you do, it's nice to know that you will have supported the government keeping you in poverty.

Hey junior, if you had my money, you'd burn yours.

 

[Tech_Esq]

Please, you're breaking my heart. How will they ever they ever squeak by on that? The poor unfortunates.

Bet you'd feel different if it was your money that was flying out the window.

Good thing you just muck out barns and don't have to worry about ever making much money. But, if you do, it's nice to know that you will have supported the government keeping you in poverty.

Hey junior, if you had my money, you'd burn yours.

Ummm....unlikely. Older than dirt guy. (If you are old enough to call me "junior" that is.)

 

[Gatekeeper]

UHOH, here goes this thread down the drain.

 

[Ravi]

Obama says that's what's fair.

The Top rate will be 39.4 in January. Do you dispute that?

This is the soak the rich and make them pay their fair share that you were screaming about 2 years ago! This is what the rich paid under Clinton. Remember?

No one pays 39.4%. You are being disingenuous.

If you are upset about the sunset clause you can address it with the man that put it in the tax code.

So, you are going on record right now to say that you don't have to obey the tax law? That if you you do your taxes and it comes up to pay the top rate, you should just cheat because that's what everyone does? Really?

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying with deductions and the progressive system, no one pays any where near 39.4% in federal taxes.

Did you not once claim that you paid less than 10% yourself?

 

[Mr Natural]

No one pays 39.4%. You are being disingenuous.

If you are upset about the sunset clause you can address it with the man that put it in the tax code.

So, you are going on record right now to say that you don't have to obey the tax law? That if you you do your taxes and it comes up to pay the top rate, you should just cheat because that's what everyone does? Really?

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying with deductions and the progressive system, no one pays any where near

Did you not once claim that you paid less than 10% yourself?

Only those with lame accountants (or none at all) pay anywhere near 39.4% in federal taxes.

 

[Care4all]

My question for you is what percentage of your income can I take before you decide it's not worthwhile to work anymore?

If I take 80% of your money, will you still go to work so you can keep paying me and hope you don't starve on the remainder?

Right now, (or at the end of they year) the top earners will pay 60% of their income in to federal, state, local and payroll taxes (assuming they are not also self-employed. If they are it would be more like 67%).

How much more do you want to take from them? And how do you propose to keep them in the game?

got a link to those figures?

what does the average middle class income earner get taxed overall compared to the wealthy, is one thing i was wondering...?

Nothing too wacked out. Common knowledge and a little math.

Top federal tax bracket after the "Bush tax cuts" expire this year: 39.4% (Let's call it 40% for ease of use.

State income taxes. Most states have them, a few don't. They vary from roughly 5% to 13% for places like DC. But let's stipulate that most are 5%-10%. Take a nice average like 8% for our purposes. Now were' at 48% or there abouts.

Next is payroll taxes. You'll pay 7.5% of your income to Social Security for the first $100+k (this year). Then you'll pay an additional 5 percent for Medicare without a cap. That would be about 60%. Although I will give you that if you earn a lot more than $100 in salary, then the net percentage of SS would be less than 7.5%.

Add to the mix that if you are self-employed, you have to pay the employers and employee's portion of social security which is another 7.5% up to the top taxable amount.

That's where the numbers come from:

39.4
8
7.5
5
______
59.9%

And, that doesn't count your property taxes and the poor saps that have local income taxes!!!

I guess YOU DO NOT figure out your own taxes at the end of the year and pay someone to do them?

NO ONE in the top bracket pays 39% of their total income in taxes...NO ONE!!!!

we have income tax brackets, where you ONLY PAY the percentage listed for the TAXABLE money earned for that tax bracket.

your presumptions in your example is WAYYYYYYYYYYY WRONG tech, it does NOT work like that....????

**average person in the very top tax bracket ends up paying about 20% in income tax.

 

[Bfgrn]

Social Security: Near-Bankrupt

FALSE

Deficit hawks plotting to cut Social Security to reduce the deficit are seriously misguided. The truth is that Social Security contributes not a single penny to the deficit. Indeed, it is the poster child for fiscal responsibility.

Social Security has administrative costs strikingly lower than those of private sector retirement plans. Unlike 401(k) plans, for example, whose administrative fees are routinely 15 or 20 percent of plan contributions, Social Security's administrative costs are less than one percent. It returns in benefits more than 99 cents of every dollar collected.

Moreover, Congress has been scrupulous about paying for every Social Security benefit it has ever enacted. To meet the anticipated higher retirement costs of the baby boom, workers and their employers have contributed more over the past few decades than has been needed to meet current costs. These higher contributions have, as intended, resulted in an accumulated surplus in 2009 of $2.6 trillion, a surplus which is projected to grow to $4.3 trillion by 2023.

To ensure that all benefits will always be paid in full and on time, Social Security's Board of Trustees annually reports to Congress on how the program is projected to do over the next three-quarters of a century. Obviously, projections extending so far out in the future will sometimes show deficits or, for that matter, unintended surpluses. The simple, mundane truth is that the actuaries refined some of their assumptions and methodologies in the 1990s and began, as a consequence, forecasting a manageable deficit over the 75-year valuation period. These constantly-evolving long-run projections, part of the program's prudent, conservative management, demonstrate that Social Security is closely monitored, a fact which could and should reassure the American people about Social Security's reliability. Instead, the fact of a projected manageable shortfall, still decades away, has been used in exactly the opposite way, to convince the American people, against all evidence, that Social Security will not be there in the future.

The shaken confidence produced by hyperbolic rhetoric surrounding every release of quite ordinary trustees reports has been exacerbated by the cavalier tone of today's deficit hawks toward the legal requirement that Social Security's revenue be used exclusively for paying benefits and related expenses.

To Deficit Hawks

 

[eagleseven]

These higher contributions have, as intended, resulted in an accumulated surplus in 2009 of $2.6 trillion, a surplus which is projected to grow to $4.3 trillion by 2023.

Where is this so-called surplus?

Oh, that's right, it is the form of treasuries...the Social Security Administration is counting federal debt as a legitimate asset. Tis a classic accounting trick...and if you didn't notice, the Federal Government has no money to give to the Social Security Administration.

Can your hand give loans to your foot?


Bfgrn, are you the type who, after getting a $200,000 second home mortgage, declares "I am $200,000 richer"?

 

[Bfgrn]

These higher contributions have, as intended, resulted in an accumulated surplus in 2009 of $2.6 trillion, a surplus which is projected to grow to $4.3 trillion by 2023.

Where is this so-called surplus?

Oh, that's right, it is the form of treasuries...the Social Security Administration is counting federal debt as an legitimate asset. Tis a classic accounting trick.

Bfgrn, are you the type who, after getting a $200,000 second home mortgage, declares "I am $200,000 richer"?

You can thank Ronbo Reagan

Wall Street Targets the Elderly
Looting Social Security

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Hank Paulson, the Gold Sacks bankster/US Treasury Secretary, who deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with multi-trillions of dollars of new US debt, is still not in jail. He is writing in the New York Times urging that the mess he caused be fixed by taking away from working Americans the Social Security and Medicare for which they have paid in earmarked taxes all their working lives.

Wall Street’s approach to the poor has always been to drive them deeper into the ground.

As there is no money to be made from the poor, Wall Street fleeces them by yanking away their entitlements. It has always been thus. During the Reagan administration, Wall Street decided to boost the values of its bond and stock portfolios by using Social Security revenues to lower budget deficits. Wall Street figured that lower deficits would mean lower interest rates and higher bond and stock prices.

Two Wall Street henchmen, Alan Greenspan and David Stockman, set up the Social Security raid in this way: The Carter administration had put Social Security in the black for the foreseeable future by establishing a schedule for future Social Security payroll tax increases. Greenspan and Stockman conspired to phase in the payroll tax increases earlier than was needed in order to gain surplus Social Security revenues that could be used to finance other government spending, thus reducing the budget deficit. They sold it to President Reagan as “putting Social Security on a sound basis.”

Along the way Americans were told that the surplus revenues were going into a special Social Security trust fund at the U.S. Treasury. But what is in the fund is Treasury IOUs for the spent revenues. When the “trust funds” are needed to pay Social Security benefits, the Treasury will have to sell more debt in order to redeem the IOUs.

Social Security was mugged again during the Clinton administration when the Boskin Commission jimmied the Consumer Price Index in order to reduce the inflation adjustments that Social Security recipients receive, thus diverting money from Social Security retirees to other uses.

We constantly hear from Wall Street gangsters and from Republicans and an occasional Democrat that Social Security and Medicare are a form of welfare that we can’t afford, an “unfunded liability.” This is a lie. Social Security is funded with an earmarked tax. People pay for Social Security and Medicare all their working lives. It is a pay-as-you-go system in which the taxes paid by those working fund those who are retired.

Currently these systems are not in deficit. The problem is that government is using earmarked revenues for other purposes. Indeed, since the 1980s Social Security revenues have been used to fund general government. Today Social Security revenues are being used to fund trillion dollar bailouts for Wall Street and to fund the Bush/Obama wars of aggression against Muslims.

Having diverted Social Security revenues to war and Wall Street, Paulson says there is no alternative but to take the promised benefits away from those who have paid for them.

Republicans have extraordinary animosity toward the poor. In an effort to talk retirees out of their support systems, Republicans frequently describe Social Security as a Ponzi scheme and “unsustainable.” They ought to know. The phony trust fund, which they set up to hide the fact that Wall Street and the Pentagon are running off with Social Security revenues, is a Ponzi scheme. Social Security itself has been with us since the 1930s and has yet to wreck our lives and budget. But it only took Hank Paulson’s derivative Ponzi scheme and its bailout a few years to inflict irreparable damage on our lives and budget.

Whole article...

Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939, in Atlanta, Georgia) is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as a co-founder of "Reaganomics."

 

[saveliberty]

Classic shell game. Where is the money again?

 

[Care4all]

Classic shell game. Where is the money again?

in US Government Securities

 

[WillowTree]

No one pays 39.4%. You are being disingenuous.

If you are upset about the sunset clause you can address it with the man that put it in the tax code.

So, you are going on record right now to say that you don't have to obey the tax law? That if you you do your taxes and it comes up to pay the top rate, you should just cheat because that's what everyone does? Really?

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying with deductions and the progressive system, no one pays any where near 39.4% in federal taxes.

Did you not once claim that you paid less than 10% yourself?

What is the top rate paid Ravi? What is the highest the progressive tax will go? You or Care 4 none can anwer that if you will.. Since you KNOW it doesn't go to 39.4 % then surely you know at what number it stops.

 

[saveliberty]

Classic shell game. Where is the money again?

in US Government Securities

Under this shell? Or this one? Maybe this one? Is it under a shell at all?

 

[Tech_Esq]

No one pays 39.4%. You are being disingenuous.

If you are upset about the sunset clause you can address it with the man that put it in the tax code.

So, you are going on record right now to say that you don't have to obey the tax law? That if you you do your taxes and it comes up to pay the top rate, you should just cheat because that's what everyone does? Really?

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying with deductions and the progressive system, no one pays any where near 39.4% in federal taxes.

Did you not once claim that you paid less than 10% yourself?

So you claim that Obama is raising the tax rate but it's all window dressing. Even though the top marginal rate is going up, they will never collect on it?

So why waste time and money doing this?

Frankly Ravi, that's a completely specious claim and not worthy of you. People will pay it. Deductions and loopholes exist for a lot of people and if you do good tax planning, you can take advantage of many of them, but if you have to pay the AMT, you're fucked. There are no loopholes, you just pay it.

In other cases, the deductions don't apply, there are as many tax situations as there are people. But, I will guarantee you that if there is a marginal tax rate, there is somebody that is paying that rate.

 

[eagleseven]

Classic shell game. Where is the money again?

in US Government Securities

I owe myself $3,000,000.

Does this make me a millionaire? Or a fool?

You can thank Ronbo Reagan

A dead man cannot change our future.

 

[The T]

No! We need more choking social programs that everyone has a "right" to.

Oh wait, we just passed Health Care! That ought to just about kill everyone of us! (Financially if not literally).

No...BOTH.

 

[Zona]

Social Security cash flow suddenly negative | Washington Examiner

Here’s something I didn’t know, from financial blogger Bruce Krasting (via John Ellis): Social Security tax receipts for the first half of 2010: $346.9 billion; Social Security benefits payments for the same period: $347.3 billion. Before this year, projections have always been that Social Security wouldn’t cross that line into negative cash flow for five years or so. Now it’s a reality. Congress has been spending Social Security’s positive cash flow for years. Now there’s no positive cash flow to spend.

Ten years before the worst doomsayers predicted, Social Security has become a net drag on the budget...and will continue to grow our near-catastrophic national debt.

Annie (Today), boedicca (Today), CrusaderFrank (Today), DiamondDave (Today), Lonestar_logic (Today), Newby (Today), Tech_Esq (Today), The T (Today), Vanquish (Today

Teabaggers unite!

 

[Bfgrn]

Classic shell game. Where is the money again?

in US Government Securities

I owe myself $3,000,000.

Does this make me a millionaire? Or a fool?

You can thank Ronbo Reagan

A dead man cannot change our future.

WHAT is your solution? Thank God Bush was UNsuccessful privatizing Social Security. Ask Italy how that worked out.


But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
Edmund Burke

 

[eagleseven]

Annie (Today), boedicca (Today), CrusaderFrank (Today), DiamondDave (Today), Lonestar_logic (Today), Newby (Today), Tech_Esq (Today), The T (Today), Vanquish (Today

Teabaggers unite!

Mocking the firefighters as your home burns, Zona?