Mitt’s VP Shocker

[vt]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

Top 20% own 85% of the wealth, too, so it is only reasonable that they most of the income taxes. Never mind the fact that people that are rich typically pay proportionately less than your average American. Furthermore, the social security tax only applies to $100,000 or so in income.

Badjuju,

One small point" "top 20% own 85% of wealth". If you are talking about top 20% of assets, this argument has faults. Younger people just starting out and have little in assets; in fact they are negative after borrowing to buy a home. As one ages mortgages are paid down, and retirement account assets grow. Sometimes inheritances, the great majority modest, add to this amount.

So when you hear that the "rich" have all the assets, be careful of condemnation; one day you may be that type of rich. So do you really think that those who have paid off and saved for decades to finance their own retirement should have their assets redistributed?

I wish you the best in your career search.

P.S. a great majority of this type of "asset rich" person did not have high incomes during their careers; they just saved and were responsible with debt.

[jpetr48]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

Bottom line expect no change. Joe

Financial Times, 11:02am Wednesday August 15th, 2012
America has lost the battle over government
--
By Jeffrey Sachs
--
Democrats offer no progressive alternative. Both parties are accomplices to the premeditated asphyxiation of the state, writes Jeffrey Sachs

Read the full article at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/21d103cc-e...44feab49a.html

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

...a winning bid is $1 billion. After the company spends the $1billion and goes over budget $4 billion more the govt just gives them the money, nobody is held responsible for anything. There are no rules.
...If they means tested social security, there would be a whole new group of lawyers finding loopholes to get money out of your estate so you can collect the full amt. Much like people do today so they can collect Medicaid in certain instances...

All true, but we should not just give up in despair because we think it's impossible to get a perfect result.
Try hard, make the improvements we can see, keep working on the rest.

When I was young America looked at such situations as problems that we would work and manage despite the complexity.
Now we view them as ideological crusades and insurmountable obstacles and worry who might be blamed for any attempted remedy that isn't magically perfect.

[c1ue]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

Raising the Social Security age is easy - but it is also at least somewhat regressive.

After all, life expectancy increases with wealth:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/...r-health_N.htm

A few years ago, psychologist Sheldon Cohen conducted an experiment. First, he asked adults a key question about their childhoods. Then, he squirted cold viruses up their noses and watched his subjects for several days to see which of them got sick.

As it turned out, the answer the adults gave to that question was "a great predictor" of whether they would develop the sniffles, says Cohen, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

The question: Did your parents own their home when you were a kid? Actually, Cohen asked that question once for every year from birth to age 18 and found that "the more years your parents owned their own home, the less likely you were to develop a cold," Cohen says.

Though Cohen's findings might seem surprising, they are consistent with a mountain of studies, compiled over several decades, that show socioeconomic status can have a profound influence on health. That research will get a rare four hours of TV time in the next month as PBS stations air a new documentary, Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?

The documentary, which features Cohen and many other scientists and public health experts, concludes that, contrary to popular belief, your health is not just the sum of your genes, your health habits and the quality of your health insurance plan. Your income, education and race matter; so does your address, your job title and, as Cohen demonstrated, the status your parents had when you were small.

"We have very dramatic differences between the haves and the have-nots," says Adewale Troutman, director of public health in Louisville. Troutman and four other residents of his city star in the first hour of the program, airing Thursday. The residents, chosen to illustrate the "health-wealth gradient," are:

•Jim Taylor, the white CEO of a Louisville hospital. He's shown jogging through a lush enclave of stately brick homes. Average life expectancy in his neighborhood: 79 years, or two years beyond the national average.

•Tondra Young, a college-educated African-American lab supervisor in the same hospital. She's shown tending the yard of the home she owns in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood. Average life expectancy there: 75 years.

•Corey Anderson, an African-American janitor in the hospital. He has high blood pressure. He lives in rental housing and mentions that he worries about the safety of his neighborhood. Average life expectancy there: 73 years.

•Mary Turner, an unemployed white mother of three who, at age 49, has had a heart attack and has arthritis and other health problems. She lives in the poorest part of town, where the life expectancy is just under 70 years.

The point of the series and the research it draws on is not that we are powerless to improve our health: Whether you are rich or poor, it's a bad idea to smoke and a good idea to eat fruits and vegetables. It's also good to have health insurance.

But all those things are harder to sustain and may do you less good if you live in a dangerous, unwalkable neighborhood with lots of fast food and no supermarkets; if you have little control in your work life; if you are constantly worried about money, housing and safety; and if, on top of it all, you live with the lifelong stress of racial discrimination.

"Personal behavior and personal choices are important," Troutman says. "But we also need to recognize that educational policy is health policy, economic policy is health policy, housing policy is health policy."

And, at a time of widespread economic pain, when the "poor are getting poorer and the middle class is being squeezed," in the words of one sociologist quoted in the film, there's plenty of reason to worry about the literal health of the nation.

As for lawyering up - let's look at the numbers.

Average life expectancy at 65 is 19.2 years - according to the latest stats.

Maximum Social Security payout is $2513. So the maximum possible benefit is over $578K, though the real income number falls both due to inflation and due to SS having ZIRP skewing the next 9 years of income.

Of course this number looks pretty close to what you'd see for a disability claim at say, 40, even with half the maximum payout, so you might be right.

I guess it all depends on whether those who would fail means testing would be willing to enter into payout-share agreements like the disability SS lawyers extend to their present lower income clients.

[Finster]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

Raising the Social Security age is easy - but it is also at least somewhat regressive.

After all, life expectancy increases with wealth: ...

SS was never intended to be a Robin Hood type of program. We have the income tax for that. Not to mention welfare. That benefits get capped goes hand-in-hand with the capping of the amount of income that is taxed. Yet if you compare the benefit levels, the lower income strata gets more per dollar "invested" than those at higher income levels. If SS were still not deemed to be progressive enough, the cap on the latter could always be raised. At least that way you'd avoid a new layer of paperwork and the likelihood of lawyers winding up with an increased share of the benefits.

[Finster]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

...

One small point" "top 20% own 85% of wealth". If you are talking about top 20% of assets, this argument has faults. Younger people just starting out and have little in assets; in fact they are negative after borrowing to buy a home. As one ages mortgages are paid down, and retirement account assets grow. Sometimes inheritances, the great majority modest, add to this amount.

So when you hear that the "rich" have all the assets, be careful of condemnation; one day you may be that type of rich. So do you really think that those who have paid off and saved for decades to finance their own retirement should have their assets redistributed? ...

Excellent point. People work and save when they're young so they have some wealth to retire on when they're old. Regardless of the overall distribution of wealth between classes, you'd expect older folks to disproportionately own the wealth.

[Finster]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

Top 20% own 85% of the wealth, too, so it is only reasonable that they most of the income taxes. Never mind the fact that people that are rich typically pay proportionately less than your average American. Furthermore, the social security tax only applies to $100,000 or so in income.

That's a symptom of a too-complicated tax code. The wealthy can hire lawyers and accountants to find loopholes. You could make the tax code fairer just by simplifiying it.

[Finster]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

You make more sense than I did. I spoke out of frustration; it's hard to imagine that what truly was at one time a party of fiscal responsibilty and budgetary sanity could become the idiots they are today. (Remember Everet Dirksen?) The Democrats were always big spenders.

Your frustration is understandable, Raz. Neither party has been a bastion of fiscal responsibility. Take the Bush years, for example. Now the Republican majority House is leading the way, but would it still do so with a Republican in the Oval Office? I think the Reps messed up big time in making the Bush tax cuts temporary in the first place. That's a big part of the mess we're in now. I'd have much preferred to see lesser cuts in lieu of bigger, temporary cuts.

I think the Reps have missed out on some good opportunities more recently. Obama really wants more taxes from higher earners, and the Reps have just completely taken that off the table. I don't like tax increases any more than anybody else, but maybe some compromise on that front could have led to the Dems conceding something more important, maybe in the way of spending cuts.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

Your frustration is understandable, Raz. Neither party has been a bastion of fiscal responsibility. Take the Bush years, for example. Now the Republican majority House is leading the way, but would it still do so with a Republican in the Oval Office? I think the Reps messed up big time in making the Bush tax cuts temporary in the first place. That's a big part of the mess we're in now. I'd have much preferred to see lesser cuts in lieu of bigger, temporary cuts.

I think the Reps have missed out on some good opportunities more recently. Obama really wants more taxes from higher earners, and the Reps have just completely taken that off the table. I don't like tax increases any more than anybody else, but maybe some compromise on that front could have led to the Dems conceding something more important, maybe in the way of spending cuts.

+1

[BK]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

+1 on neither party is a bastion of fiscal responsibility. Check out dear Gov Christie signing a bill to require the purchase of Solar Energy for utilities, at a time with Natural Gas and Coal are at incredible lows, interestingly Governor Christie brother has a Solar Energy Consulting business and every County in New Jersey is building out solar arrays. Gov Christie as a fiscal conservative-limited governor is merely an optical illusion. How perfect that Christie is giving the key note address.
http://conservativenewjersey.com/ano...d-solar-panels

[Slimprofits]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

SS was never intended to be a Robin Hood type of program

Ha! And the Social Security "number" was not intended to be used as the basis of a sort of hybrid National identification system.

[evangellydonut]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

I was at a small lunch meeting with a republican senator who was talking about the wasteful military spending. Its one thing to debate the amount of military spending, but the cronyism and wasteful spending is crazy. He said defense contractors compete for new contracts and, for example, a winning bid is $1 billion. After the company spends the $1billion and goes over budget $4 billion more the govt just gives them the money, nobody is held responsible for anything. There are no rules.

Not true anymore... used to be the case from late 80s to maybe early 2000s... now, military is experimenting with firm-fixed price contracts wherever possible, and the cost-plus ones they issue are subject to Nunn Mccurdy after it goes (25%?) over budget. Then it becomes the senator's responsibility truly evaluate what's needed and not, and provide the military with budget accordingly. These days, different senators have different pet programs they'll do whatever they can to keep them going, which undermines the Nunn Mccurdy process... So point your fingers back at the senator for dealing and wheeling with his colleagues instead.

With that said, doesn't mean that there isn't a ton of fat that can be cut out of the military procurement process... if you think spending a few hundred on a wrench is bad, I know of an instance where it cost $1k for a simple 3 feet Cat5e ethernet cable, not to mention all the labor associated with buying it. (had to do with the fact that since it was bought on government money, it had to be traceable and locatable if/when an audit takes place... then it snowballed to putting UID labels on a freaking ethernet cable because that's the best way to do this in order to meet the contract requirements... *sigh*)

[c1ue]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

SS was never intended to be a Robin Hood type of program. We have the income tax for that. Not to mention welfare. That benefits get capped goes hand-in-hand with the capping of the amount of income that is taxed. Yet if you compare the benefit levels, the lower income strata gets more per dollar "invested" than those at higher income levels. If SS were still not deemed to be progressive enough, the cap on the latter could always be raised. At least that way you'd avoid a new layer of paperwork and the likelihood of lawyers winding up with an increased share of the benefits.

That isn't my point.

Social Security was intended to be a retirement program.

If in fact the lower classes' average life expectancy is 70, but the upper classes' life expectancy is 79, then effectively you're having the poor people die to subsidize the richer people, because the poor people simply aren't around to enjoy their Social Security 'retirement'.

Thus what I'm noting isn't that Social Security is intended to be a redistribution system - it is that having a higher eligibility age effectively makes Social Security into one.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

That isn't my point.

Social Security was intended to be a retirement program.

If in fact the lower classes' average life expectancy is 70, but the upper classes' life expectancy is 79, then effectively you're having the poor people die to subsidize the richer people, because the poor people simply aren't around to enjoy their Social Security 'retirement'.

Thus what I'm noting isn't that Social Security is intended to be a redistribution system - it is that having a higher eligibility age effectively makes Social Security into one.

once again, please be careful how one uses life expectancy. life expectancy first of all changes each day of your life. It also has so many variables involved in it. For example at age 65 it is true that those in the lower half of income levels have a much lower life expectancy (81 vs 86) but this difference drops dramatially as the group ages, but it is also true that smoking levels vary greatly by income level. Smoking rates are less than 50% for upper level income levels compared with lower ones which is only one of the factors that effect life expectancy.

[vt]

Re: Mitt’s VP Shocker

How much of this is based on unhealthy life styles? Some is probably because of smoking, drugs, and excessive alcohol.
How much is caused by crime? If young men in their teens and twenties are dying from gunshots in the inner city, this will reduce the life expectancy numbers quite a bit.

Bad choices had bad outcomes.