Fiscal conservatism now? Or it'll be shoved down our throats later.

[kyzr]

What if their income drops below $1 million, the year before retirement?
What if you only make +$1 million for one year?
So the top 1% of incomes pay a few bucks more in SS tax.
12.4% more isn't a few bucks.

OK, so lets say step-1 is raise the cap to $1m. That may fix SS by itself.
If not, they can raise the ages 1-year.
SS needs to be fixed.

 

[g5000]

You want to charge incomes over $1m, 12.4% in SS taxes, and they get zero benefits?

That's basically the idea when you hear someone talking about "raising the cap" and "means testing", yes.

 

[g5000]

What if you only make +$1 million for one year?

Then you currently have one year where you don't pay SS above $168,000 of income.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Then you currently have one year where you don't pay SS above $168,000 of income.

So, income of $999,999 only pays SS tax up to $168,000 but income of
$1,000,000 pays SS tax on the entire amount?

That won't cause any changes in behavior, right?

 

[YoursTruly]

It's very simple to balance the budget and pay down the debt. Unfortunately, we don't want our politicians to actually do that.

"Gimme gimme gimme, and make that guy over there pay for it."

Eliminate all tax expenditures, with the exception of the EITC which is the only tax expenditure proven to increase productivity.

Raise the Social Security and Medicare eligibility age to 70, and index them to 9 percent of the population going forward. We are living longer than our ancestors, we should be working longer.

These two things alone would bring a gigantic surplus which we could use to pay off the debt and lower everyone's tax rates.

The first would also result in people and businesses earning identical incomes paying identical taxes. And it would result in disincentivizing bribes in the form of campaign cash to elected officials.

Like I said. Simple.

But none of you want that or you would be demanding it.

Don't mess with SS until after everything else is in place. Especially when you're talking about working until your 70. Fuck that. The retirement age at 65 is too damn high.

 

[Invisibleflash]

And to think, in Jan of 1981, when Reagan took office, the national debt was only $2 trillion. 7 presidents later it's $34 trillion.

The people are either going to start supporting actual conservatism. Or conservatism is going to be forced on us. I just hope it's not the latter. Because the latter is going to be worse than the great depression and for a lot longer.

No more welfare, even for the needy. The corporations are going to have to stand on their own two feet, with much higher taxes. The wages will have to plummet. Mortgage companies forced into actual bankruptcy with no government help. People won't stand for the wage cuts that'll be necessary to keep their employers in business, so they'll quit and the companies will be forced to close.
And 1000 other consequences will take hold.

Well, the Mexicans might stick around to fill those jobs. But who knows.

Whether its Trump or Biden in the next election, neither one of them are going to stop the out of control spending. Both have a long record of spending way too much. In fact Trump brags about being the kind of debt and his answer to all of this is to just print more money. Biden's spending record will match Trumps, even with his last two years of a GOP house majority. Because 90% of the house GOP are big spending RINO's like Trump.

I don't think the politicians will stop spending until America implodes...and even then, not sure.
It is not in their nature. $$ is their drug of choice for their compulsive spending addiction.

 

[YoursTruly]

I don't think the politicians will stop spending until America implodes...and even then, not sure.
It is not in their nature. $$ is their drug of choice for their compulsive spending addiction.

And they'll keep blaming the democrats for all their spending.

Last week I read something about the Senate being stalled over a multi billion $$$$ Ukraine package. With the GOP in charge of the House, how TF did the senate get a multi Billion $$$ Ukraine spending package, to start with?

 

[JWBooth]

I don't think the politicians will stop spending until America implodes...and even then, not sure.
It is not in their nature. $$ is their drug of choice for their compulsive spending addiction.


View attachment 882879

Ask the 30k dead, homeless, Palestinians

 

[YoursTruly]

No matter how you slice or dice it, fiscal conservatism will have to come about. Whether it's now, and Republican voters finally stop supporting rino's like Trump, Mike Johnson and McConnell. Or the government goes into full blown socialist mode, like much of south American has.
We know how that ends.

There's simply no path that leads to anything other than massive fiscal constraints on our government.

The easy path is to do it now. Because the longer we wait, the harder it's going to be later. Especially for the elderly, the children and the disabled. Including veterans.