Slashdot Mirror

"Older folks on the other hand that see their doctor monthly or more were greatly affected by not getting to see their same doctor."

Curious what stopped them seeing their doctor as usual?

Looking at the video they didn't explain anything and in the comments the only clear complaint was a two month old comment by someone saying their deductible had doubled - which sounds like something that Trump caused. https://www.cbpp.org/sabotage-...

"Blacks commit vastly disproportionate amount of crimes, especially violent ones"

All things male are considered bad. [The blatant sexism is everywhere. Making anything and everything a gendered issue (and therefore, a problem with men, of course). - Women of this generation make at least 8% more than similarly qualified males. [Looks like I remembered that 8% number from that Time Magazine article I linked]

White men systemically discriminated against in all spheres of life - from family court - to hiring [They literally had to end blind recruiting because, once the bias against men was removed, MORE men than before were found to be qualified. These talking head idiots didn't even realize that today's system already discriminates in womens' favor. Of course, the solution was to halt the study, lest we have a solid foundation to prove discrimination. But, I think this is VERY good early proof of systemic discrimination in hiring, at least in Australia.] - to welfare (men are not eligible in any way unless disabled or "disabled") [I was somewhat wrong here. If you look under "The Three-Month Time Limit", it appears that women without children cannot get SNAP long-term either. So, I had one, very minor point, which I don't have good evidence from a mainstream source for.]

Looks like it's you who got fucked. Moron.

Stop lying corporations pay 40% of the taxes, and about 60% of the remaining income taxes are corporate profits passed through LlLCs and C corps, that are taxed higher than the corporate tax rate. You lie, but you were told that, and you wanted to believe the lie.

Citation needed. Quoting this document:

Almost half of all federal revenue (48 percent) comes from individual income taxes. ...
Corporate income taxes make up about 9 percent of federal revenue

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-are-sources-revenue-federal-government

For those to lazy to follow and read the link:

About 48 percent of federal revenue comes from individual income taxes, 9 percent from corporate income taxes, and another 35 percent from payroll taxes that fund social insurance programs (figure 1). The rest comes from a mix of sources.

reference figure https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/3.1.1_-_figure_1.png

Stop lying corporations pay 40% of the taxes, and about 60% of the remaining income taxes are corporate profits passed through LlLCs and C corps, that are taxed higher than the corporate tax rate. You lie, but you were told that, and you wanted to believe the lie.

Citation needed. Quoting this document:

Almost half of all federal revenue (48 percent) comes from individual income taxes. ...
Corporate income taxes make up about 9 percent of federal revenue

If you get a $4,000 refund, you are a moron who knows nothing about Tax Planning.

I think you're missing the point. I'm referring to how much you take home with reformed tax bill relative to before - nothing to do with withholding.

For reference, the majority of people - those making under $91,700 — will receive about $400, on average. Nowhere near the $8000 they are borrowing from their kids.

Republican sabotage. The ACA is basically insurance, implemented by the F'd up insurance industry. As insurance you need as many healthy and unhealthy people in the pool to make actuarial sense. The GOP killed the ability for insurance co-ops to exist in a meaningful manner to avoid competition with incumbents, sued any and every part of it they could think. GOP states didn't take medicare expansion, to keep pool down and end user costs up. Shorten the enrollment period, shut the federal exchange down on Sundays for "maintenance", remove the penalty for not signing up to keep pool low, costs up. For gods sake medicare itself is not allowed to negotiate drug prices and have to pay what the F'd up pharma industry want to gouge us for. See https://www.cbpp.org/sabotage-... for a better list.

All Americans are either making minimum wage at minimum or getting welfare which is even more money.

According to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, you're off a bit.

It says the median TANF grant for a household of 3 is $432. That's less than 14 hours a week at minimum wage, and barely over 25% of the federal poverty line.
Also, that's TANF. You have to have kids to get that. Most states don't have any other cash assistance program.

Everyone lives paycheck to paycheck.

I don't. I have several months of savings, and I'm many months ahead on my mortgage. That despite being a low-paid government worker, income-eligible for SNAP in my state.

Nope. The ACA didn't take away 30 million people's healthcare.

You're thinking of the cross burners trying to REPEAL it. DARVO tactics again... unsurprising that white supremacist trolls use tactics of domestic abusers though.

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/who-...

What do you call this then?

It is called "inequality", which is not the same thing as "job losses".

There is no evidence that "this time is different".

What do you call this then?

As processes are automated, production costs fall, freeing up money to invest or spend on other things...

Oh, trickle down economics. Yes, that works super well, as evidenced by what I linked to.

How did you create a world in your head that is so different than the actual world?

How do you figure?
https://www.cbpp.org/sites/def...
https://timebusinessblog.files...

If you were as smart as you think you are you'd be ruthlessly putting yourself on the correct side of that divide for the sake of your offspring because it will be nearly impossible to cross it by the time a child born today has grandchildren unless something major changes.

Please explain your stance that the problem is correcting itself. I think this is denial so you don't have to man up.

There was budget surpluses each year between 1998 and 2001, 2001 being the last year of Clinton's budgets. In 2002, the first year of Bush's budgets, we once again had a deficit.

In 2001, the projected 10 year surplus was ~5.6 trillion, with the national debt standing at ~5.7 trillion. That means, if the projection held true, we stood within 11 years of eliminating the national debt. And, of course, we remember what republicans did: a tax cut, a give away to big pharm, and two wars put straight onto the debt. Given the choice, republicans exploded the debt instead of paying it off. They actively chose to fuck over everyone except the 1%. And lets put this in perspective... that tax cut was supposed to cost 1.6 trillion over 10 years, but over just 8 years our debt exploded to 10.6 trillion... a 5 trillion dollar increase... BECAUSE republicans chose to say "the debt doesn't matter," right Dick.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/...

The Bush tax cuts are responsible for a full 1/3rd of our current national debt. You know, those tax cuts that republicans swore wer going to pay for themselves, increase growth, and increase revenue. And just as they did when Reagan passed his tax cut.... they didn't do anything the republicans swore they'd do. revenue fell (duh), growth was anemic at best (much slower job growth and slightly slower GDP growth than when Clinton was in office), and the national debt exploded.

And lets face it, this tax cut bullshit is ll based on Dick "the dick" Cheney's Laffer Curve which was never anything more than a line on a napkin...with no numbers attached. It was the basis for the supply-side economics bullshit that has driven this country into massive debt. Even the guy who developed it for Reagan says it doesn't work. But, true believes always have brown eyes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Quite simply put... there are no fiscally conservative republicans. All there is is a bunch of anti-federal government, anti-American politicians that are leeching everything they can out of this countries coffers for themselves and their wealthy benefactors.

Because, of course, while you have have republicans screaming about spending less, they're pushing through tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy: https://www.politico.com/story...

Reagan enacted two tax cuts, one in 1981, one in 1983. 11 tax increases later Bush Sr. was elected and he... raised taxes more.... then Clinton raised taxes a record with a record breaking increase. Net results after all those tax INCREASES.... longest period of growth in US history, and a budget surplus for 4 years. Took republicans less than 2 years to fuck it all up.

I've got a great idea... if this tax cut doesn't do what republicans say it is going to (which it wont, because they NEVER have), then every single congress person that voted for it, and every single citizen who voted in those congress people... every one of them should forfeit every single penny they have to pay for their fuckup. Reagan cut taxes, the debt exploded; Bush Jr cut taxes, the debt exploded; Who wants to bet on a 30 trillion national debt in 5 years?

Federal and state funding has not decreased,

Actually, it turns out...maybe not.

In fact in best Laffer curve fashion

The Laffer Curve is a fraud. It's not real, as in it's nonsense.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/...

And it doesn't really seem all that unreasonable for the US to cut corporation tax rates given it has the highest tax rate in the OECD.

It is not true that the actual corporate tax rate in the US is higher than the other OECD countries. It's a canard, as in lie, as in bogus.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/...

Supply-siders love to talk about Laffer curves and "the highest corporate tax rates in the world", but they have sold you a bill of goods. Their claims don't match up with reality.

The CBO scoring of the plan assumed a 1.9% GDP growth rate. Historically, the US GDP growth is closer to 3.6% annually, and if you use that as your baseline - there is an elimination of the deficit and a surplus after 4 years. So using the wonderful Bush/Obama baseline, we add debt; using the baseline of all other Presidents, we turn a surplus. Personally, I believe 1.9% is NOT the new normal; witness this year with 3%+ every single quarter. A baseline more like the historical 3.6% average should have been used.

At the most generous, social programs and welfare are ~$1.4B. This includes medicaid, medicare, and welfare.

It's actually about 1000 times that, around $1.4 trillion.

. If you include social security (a fully funded and currently net profitable expense), you get to your $23B number

Again, off by a factor of 1000.

Alternatively, shift 1% of our military budget into NASA and get $60B

Off by a factor of 10. So pretty much every single number you quoted was off. Way off. Not just one simple mistake - EVERYTHING was a mistake. Sorry. Oh, and for the source? The source is what I linked to originally. You're welcome.

Check your facts. Twenty four percent goes to Social Security, 26% goes to medical spending. Safety net is 9%, and interest on the debt is 6%. That's 65% right there. Sixteen percent is on defense/military. The balance is everything else. The military budget is $600 billion (and that includes salaries and pensions for soldiers and veterans). Shifting 1% will be $6 billion, not 60 billion. You're off by a few orders of magnitude in most of your numbers...

Yeah! I mean, it's not like we give billions of dollars to other industries like oil. Or have paid trillions of dollars in protecting those same interest abroad.

But it's not just oil. How about the $5.3 billion in improper subsidies for Boeing for the Dreamliner? Or that Boeing and Lockheed get billion dollar subsidies for launching absolutely nothing into space. Pork-barrel spending is never truer than in aerospace. How about the $20 billion we give to farmers to NOT GROW CROPS.

Do you know what Big Oil, Big Aerospace, and Big Agriculture all have in common? They are predominantly located in red states. Not that all subsidies are republican-related of course. $1T goes to medicare, medicaid, and ACA. $366B goes to safety net programs. Hell, $1.5B goes to the entertainment industry every year.

Personally, I'm very interested in the coming electrification of the auto industry and have invested my own money into it. It was a smart move. Anyone with half a head could see it coming a decade ago.

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
http://nation.time.com/2011/04...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03...
https://www.economist.com/news...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
https://www.cbpp.org/research/...

or being lied to. Not sure which. See here. Took me a few seconds on google to find that. The sad thing is you managed to get modded up.

Cutting student loan funding isn't to solution. All that does is force poor kids completely out of college. Like it was before we started funding higher education with tax dollars post WWII.

If you're just being lied to please educate yourself on google. If you're actively lying then, well, fuck off you right wing revisionist. Right back at you.

So because there are some people finding a job, which may even be a lesser quality job,

That's captured by the unemployment statistics, believe it or not. And those numbers are dropping, which is good.

The only things that matter are A) how many people are dropping out

People drop out because they retire. A lot of people, especially now with baby boomers retiring. Thus the raw number "how many people are dropping out" is not a useful statistic.

The only statistic s we have that tells us something are the number of people on welfare and the number of people dropping out.

Trump likes to criticize Obama for having a "welfare economy," but the truth is the number of people on welfare have been dropping as well. It's not a good number (although you wish it were) because it's affected by things like outreach efforts, encouraging eligible people to sign up.

Let's address those in reverse order.

opposing "gay marriage" qualifies as homophobia

The scare quotes strongly suggest that in this case, at least, it probably does.

opposing the presence of illegal Mexicans in the US "qualifies as" racism

Being concerned about illegal immigration is not racist. However, suggesting that the issue is solely Mexican is ignorant at best. Maybe you just used "Mexican" to refer to anyone from south of the Rio Grande (including Central America and South America), but I'm not sure that helps your point either.

not wanting to pay for other people's college education "qualifies as" denying access to education

Do you support a U.S. that's closer to a meritocracy than an aristocracy? How about the idea (or ideal) that hard work, intelligence, and persistence can lift someone out of an impoverished background? If so, then public funding for higher education is essential. This has nothing to do with whether you personally get a degree; it has everything to do with the kind of society you want to live in.

Also, it's a tiny portion of your overall taxes. Looks like about 13% of your state taxes, and less than 3% of your federal taxes, go towards higher education.

not wanting to pay for a woman's abortion "qualifies as" denying her the right to control her own body

This is largely a moot point, and seems almost like a straw man.

To the extent that it's not, though: abortion is one of many legitimate medical practices that some people question on moral grounds. (Other examples: birth control for unmarried people; permanent sterilization; palliative care for patients who might be cured with more extreme treatment.) Singling abortion out for de-funding in government health programs makes it effectively inaccessible for many patients.

And yes, removing an option in a largely-binary choice (carry vs. terminate a pregnancy) takes control away from the patient.

You people

... seriously?

Let's address those in reverse order.

opposing "gay marriage" qualifies as homophobia

The scare quotes strongly suggest that in this case, at least, it probably does.

opposing the presence of illegal Mexicans in the US "qualifies as" racism

Being concerned about illegal immigration is not racist. However, suggesting that the issue is solely Mexican is ignorant at best. Maybe you just used "Mexican" to refer to anyone from south of the Rio Grande (including Central America and South America), but I'm not sure that helps your point either.

not wanting to pay for other people's college education "qualifies as" denying access to education

Do you support a U.S. that's closer to a meritocracy than an aristocracy? How about the idea (or ideal) that hard work, intelligence, and persistence can lift someone out of an impoverished background? If so, then public funding for higher education is essential. This has nothing to do with whether you personally get a degree; it has everything to do with the kind of society you want to live in.

Also, it's a tiny portion of your overall taxes. Looks like about 13% of your state taxes, and less than 3% of your federal taxes, go towards higher education.

not wanting to pay for a woman's abortion "qualifies as" denying her the right to control her own body

This is largely a moot point, and seems almost like a straw man.

To the extent that it's not, though: abortion is one of many legitimate medical practices that some people question on moral grounds. (Other examples: birth control for unmarried people; permanent sterilization; palliative care for patients who might be cured with more extreme treatment.) Singling abortion out for de-funding in government health programs makes it effectively inaccessible for many patients.

And yes, removing an option in a largely-binary choice (carry vs. terminate a pregnancy) takes control away from the patient.

You people

... seriously?

Don't be a fool. Study after study has discredited similar claptrap from the right.

OMG We must drug test all recipeiants of welfare because they are spending it on drugs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/us/no-savings-found-in-florida-welfare-drug-tests.html

OMG welfare recipiants must be required to be actively applying for job

http://www.cbpp.org/research/p...

Your hypothesis was a valid one to initially have. Something like "People won't work if they have a safety net to sponge off of" The problem is that theory has been statically proven false, not only that, the opposite has been proven true. " People work more if they have a safety net to sponge off of when they need to"

I home school, so we are square on #1 already, and #2 the tax deductions are a drop in the bucket compared to my $1,000,000 investment per child and their 45 years of productive, tax paying citizenship. You are a dead end to society, and what you pay in taxes goes to support you and SS goes to your parents. You do realize that I pay property tax as well as you do, and only 25% of your property tax bill goes to K-12 education anyway. http://www.cbpp.org/research/p... Sorry to burst your bubble. The real ripoff is that I will pay about $60k towards public education as a fraction of my property tax while also putting in the effort to home school and pay for those expenses out of pocket, but such is life.

I have lived in Kansas for about 27 years, so I guess that makes my opinion at least as valid as the opinion piece from a Kansas City, MISSOURI newspaper

No, not really. The Kansas City, MISSOURI newspaper actually included evidence.

As for the other, you're just flat out wrong. Did you know that since Brownback and company took over in 2012, Kansas GDP (GSP) has grown half as fast as the national GDP?

http://www.cbpp.org/research/f...

Second, did you know that you can't trust any of the economic numbers that have been coming out of the Brownback administration? Here's why:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view...

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/0...

And since you seemed offended that I would cite a MISSOURI newspaper that is all of about 15 feet from the Kansas border, here's some fact-checking from a Wichita, KANSAS newspaper that you might find illuminating. Oh never mind, you're from Kansas. You wouldn't find anything illuminating. What's the matter with Kansas, anyway?

http://www.kansas.com/news/pol...

Americans are addicted to their jobs. U.S. workers not only put in more hours than workers do almost anywhere else. They're also increasingly retiring later and taking fewer vacation days, ...

Perhaps we're just afraid of being unemployed and destitute. Employers show little loyalty to their employees (Pro Tip: If your company says "employees are our most valuable asset" start looking for another job.), the social safety net is not as strong as in Europe and it's clear that our politicians don't really care about the poor and (arguably) middle class -- look at the various budgets, including the latest Republican House budget which gets 62% from low/moderate income programs while also including tax cuts for the wealthy. (see below).

House GOP Budget Gets 62 Percent of Budget Cuts From Low- and Moderate-Income Programs

As proponent of Basic Income, I disagree with much of the analysis offered in the linked article. However, I wanted to sink into this one point in particular: "If you take the dollars targeted on people in the bottom fifth or two-fifths of the population and convert them to universal payments to people all the way up the income scale, you’re redistributing income upward. That would increase poverty and inequality rather than reduce them." This is a seductive line of reasoning, and appealing to liberals. But it misses the point about HOW taxation must be structured to take this into account. While basic income must NOT be means tested, taxation almost certainly must be. Poor ppl shouldn't be burdened by having to prove or disprove wealth and income. Having grown up poor I can assure you that that IS a huge burden. Let those most benefiting from the system be the ones who fight for the most fair tax rate possible, because they have all the tools and expertise at their disposal to do that. Poor ppl do not. So to the extent that basic income hurts ppl on the bottom, the taxcode must to that extent raise revenue from the higher economic classes to compensate for it. Easier said than done, of course, but the practicality of moving forward is an entirely different issue than the theoretical underpinnings of the idea in the first place. http://www.cbpp.org/poverty-an...

No, I don't even know why you think that. Here's a graph.

(Actually, income equality is more equal than wealth equality, because the bottom 20% have zero or negative wealth, because they are in debt. For example, if you have $1000 in the bank, you personally have more than the entire bottom 20% combined. Remember that next time someone tries to lie to you with statistics. Also, poor people often get income from their taxes because of EIC).

Wealth concentration comes and goes, probably with the shifting balance between the returns on capital and labor. In the 1920s wealth inequality in the U.S. was a bit worse than it is now (figure 3, 1913-2014). I seem to remember hearing that it was worse before that. What does that fact do to your conclusions?

I don't buy what you are selling. Poor people have it way better now than in the past. The world keeps becoming a better place. None of us can guarantee that things will be sane and fair. Don't tread on me.

1/3 of the US's Tax revenue comes from Payroll tax, which is born more by the poor. The majority of the wealthy's income is either not subject to this tax, or above the limit to apply. This graph shows only 46% is income tax, of which around 50% is from the wealthy.

So, it looks like the wealthy are shouldering about 25% of the federal tax receipts, sounds like a good deal considering what they get.

Its also far from almost all.
I always wondered how people could say, "The rich pay most of the taxes," and "Taxing the rich at 90% would only cover a small part of Federal spending."

This is a look behind the mirror for anyone without the time to dig in themselves.

Are you sure? I also did some quick math and came to a different conclusion, that we would probably *save* money.

Adult population of the U.S.(rounded up): 246,000,000

Gross Federal Tax Revenue of the U.S.: 3.3 trillion

Cost of providing all adults 1800/month: 443 billion

THINGS YOU COULD GET RID OF:
food stamps: 74 billion
soc sec ( just pensions ): 52 billion
Unemployment Insurance : 520 billion ( says CNN )

#http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/99-total-population-by-child-and-adult#detailed/1/any/false/869,36,868,867,133/39,40,41/416,417

http://www.cbpp.org/research/p...

http://www.usgovernmentrevenue...

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/2...

Tax as a %age of GDP is a fairly widespread way of measuring the tax burden, which today is relatively low.

This and this show the makeup percentage of revenue. Percentage from income taxes looks to have been higher around 2000 and in the '80s.

Your language is deceptive. You are trying to present income taxes today as having dramatically increased or being relatively high when neither of these things are true. As the graphs above show, percentage of revenue from income tax has sat somewhere between 40 and 50% since the '50s.

The CBO gets their data from the IRS. If you think everyone is lying then point to your own solid analysis based off of IRS data.

The CBO only uses the data they are told to use. For example, specifically the report that you linked to omitted payroll taxes, which make up 34% of all federal revenue (income tax is 42%). When you factor in that the percentage of their income that the rich pay in payroll taxes is vanishingly small compared to the percentage of total income that the rest of us pay, those little bar graphs look completely different. If you factor in total income instead of just adjusted income, it skews the results even further away from what the Tax Foundation is claiming.

See, that's how your citation is useless. The CBO was just doing their job by reporting on only the data that Congress allowed them to use. And that friend, is how you use statistics to tell a lie. It's how congress does it and it's how the "Tax Foundation" does it.

http://www.cbpp.org/research/p...

And the data - is it in question? It comes from the IRS data itself, and has been published by the Tax Foundation for years and years. If it was in error, wouldn't someone have caught it by now?

Yes, it's in error, and yes, the Tax Foundation has been "caught" more than once.

http://economistsview.typepad....

http://www.cbpp.org/archives/t...

http://www.nj.com/opinion/inde...

http://mathbabe.org/2014/02/14...

http://angrybearblog.com/2012/...

http://www.citizensforethics.o...

The Tax Foundation is as phony as a three dollar bill.

Curious, I'm not aware the citation of one piece of for-profit journalism has been deemed to be authoritative when determining cause and effect.

They are just reporting the findings of authoritative sources.

I'm also curious about the degree to which private educational institutions are simply getting less money from the state(s)?

There is zero effect on private institutions since they do not receive state money. Tuition at these institutions will naturally rise due to inflation. Public schools have that same cost rise plus the added decrease in revenue due to decreases in state funding. That is why private school tuition is only rising at a rate of 60% over 10 years but public tuition rate is rising at a rate 105% over 10 years.

Can I open college and get free money from the state to help run things?

No

At any rate, I'm STILL trying to figure out why any larger percentage of my state tax dollars should be funding personal education that I certainly don't directly benefit from, and indirect benefits would be largely dubious.

Seeing how uneducated you are, I suggest you make use of the public universities available in your state to get a clue.

About as well as trickle-down economics.

.. the trickle-down economics, which you seem to deride without any clear reasons or citations.

Trickle-down economics is essentially saying let's dump all the money up top, and the overflow, like an overflowing bucket, will reach all the people down below the top. The problem with trickle down economics is that neither the top nor the bucket are fixed sizes, and thus shrinking the top's numbers and increasing the size meant less for everyone else. This is what occurred in reality, and can be easily seen in the consolidation of wealth in the upper 0.5 - 1% at levels not seen since the 1940s. It should be noted that the major dip from the 40s through the 2000s also matched a huge growth in total wealth, but as that increase in overall wealth growth has slowed, the top 1% is gathering it back quickly, impoverishing everyone else.

Replying only because some misguided soul thinks your post was "Informative", so I'm educating him more than you...

So, actually...

In fiscal year 2013, the federal government spent $3.5 trillion, amounting to 21 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, or the total value of goods and services that a country produces in a year. Of that $3.5 trillion

Let's see how it breaks down:

Social Security: Another 24 percent of the budget, or $814 billion, paid for Social Security, which provided monthly retirement benefits averaging $1,294 to 37.9 million retired workers in December 2013.

Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP: Three health insurance programs — Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) — together accounted for 22 percent of the budget in 2013, or $772 billion.

Safety net programs: About 12 percent of the federal budget in 2013, or $398 billion, supported programs that provide aid (other than health insurance or Social Security benefits) to individuals and families facing hardship.

That comes to around 58% of the money. Qualifies as a majority rather easily, I suspect. ;)

Whereas:
Defense and international security assistance: In 2013, 19 percent of the budget, or $643 billion, paid for defense and security-related international activities.

"Corporate welfare" falls under "Other", which totals around 3%, bringing the grand total to 22%.

And then there's our overpriced and underperforming health delivery system. (Note: ACA/Obamacare is a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.) And our failing K-12 education, which is severely underfunded and strangling on bureaucracy.

Along with the steadily declining state level college/university systems. (And before the right wingers start screaming about foreign students, remember that they come from places where it's much harder to get into any school and a lot of the higher educations options are not as good as the US, even with our decline. Both public and private schools love out of country students because they pay full tuition.)

But it's all OK, because the upper 10%, and mostly the upper .01% and above are doing really good. For example six members of the Walton family had the same net worth as either the bottom 28% or 41% of American families combined (depending on how it is counted).

Of course historically low corporate tax levels have nothing to do with this, right?

Although taxes paid by corporations, measured as a share of the economy, rose modestly during the boom years of the 1990s, they remained sharply lower even in the boom years than in previous decades. According to OMB historical data, corporate taxes averaged 2 percent of GDP in the 1990s. That represented only about two-fifths of their share of GDP in the 1950s, half of their share in the 1960s, and three-quarters of their share in the 1970s.

The share that corporate tax revenues comprise of total federal tax revenues also has collapsed, falling from an average of 28 percent of federal revenues in the 1950s and 21 percent in the 1960s to an average of about 10 percent since the 1980s.

The effective corporate tax rate — that is, the percentage of corporate profits that is paid in federal corporate income taxes — has followed a similar pattern. During the 1990s, corporations as a group paid an average of 25.3 percent of their profits in federal corporate income taxes, according to new Congressional Research Service estimates. By contrast, they paid more than 49 percent in the 1950s, 38 percent in the 1960s, and 33 percent in the 1970s.

So it it any wonder that the US is at best standing still, and more likely moving backwards when it comes to national infrastructure spending? And guess where the money goes?

What I've heard from fusion researchers is that the budgets have been drastically cut over the years. When they were predicting it within twenty years when I was a kid, they assumed a certain level of funding. Some have said that research is on schedule, if you measure by research money rather than years. In any case, the researchers certainly aren't getting all the money they need.

The reference to "too much $$$ on war-making & Fusion R&D" makes little sense, considering the relative magnitudes. One might as well refer to "too much water used in Lake Superior and my backyard pool". According to this, defense and such spending is 19% of the budget, while scientific and medical research as a whole is 2%. From this, current federal fusion research money is about $400M, which is more than three orders of magnitude smaller than the military budget. To put it another way, transferring 1% of the defense budget to fusion research would increase the latter by about a factor of 15. The second reference said that money spent on fusion for 57 years was about the same as what we spent on 72 days of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Also, if we're certain that such thorium reactors could be made to work effectively, producing all necessary energy cleanly, spending on it is not research. We're talking engineering. If there's any research involved, your second paragraph is at best uncertain. If it were this easy, somebody (not necessarily in the US) would probably have done it, probably India. I'm not arguing against putting serious resources into alternative reactor designs, but focusing only on one project seems way counterproductive. Some people don't want to spend Federal money on research while we've still got needy [white] kids. We've got lots of money if we want to spend it, and I'd like to keep pressing forward on many fronts.

from: http://www.cbpp.org/files/esta...

Today, 99.86 percent of estates owe no estate tax at all, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (TPC).4 Among the 3,780 estates that owe any tax, the “effective” tax rate — that is, the percentage of the estate’s value that is paid in taxes — is 16.6 percent, on average

...

Only the wealthiest estates in the country pay the tax because it is levied only on the portion of an estate’s value that exceeds a specified exemption level, currently $5.25 million per person (effectively $10.5 million per married couple).

The budget is driven by non-defense spending - entitlements - which consume nearly every dollar in Federal Revenue that DC receives.

When you say entitlement, it evokes a bunch of money-grubbing welfare queens who have more and more children to increase their federal benefit. The truth is that the largest portion of the budget (24%) is social security, which isn't a government handout - it is funded by working taxpayers who have paid into the system for their whole lives.

Things that might be considered entitlements, or uncompensated financial assistance to the unemployed, disabled, etc. make up only about 12% of the budget, not the 2/3 you disingenuously claim. Source: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=vi...

What I'm confused about is why it isn't an "entitlement" when we give massive cost-plus contracts to defense contractors with no requirement that they actually produce products that perform as promised (JSF, or any number of botched projects with no accountability). Or force our nation to give them handouts to build overpriced, technically inferior products (SLS) when free market competition offers far superior options (Commercial crew). The point isn't just that the military budget is massive (though it is), it's that much of the spending is propping up useless programs, developing technically complex boondoggles to fight enemies that don't exist. We're getting the worst of both worlds, the bureaucracy and inefficiency of government with the greed and short-sightedness of industry.

from http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258
I know very few places where $1300/mo is enough to live on when you're over 65 and/or disabled. America doesn't have Nationalized Socialized medicine.

It's not socialized medicine, but Medicare applies to those groups specifically and is national socialized health insurance.

from http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258

Social Security: Another 24 percent of the budget, or $814 billion, paid for Social Security, which provided monthly retirement benefits averaging $1,294 to 37.9 million retired workers in December 2013. Social Security also provided benefits to 2.9 million spouses and children of retired workers, 6.2 million surviving children and spouses of deceased workers, and 11 million disabled workers and their eligible dependents in December 2013.

I know very few places where $1300/mo is enough to live on when you're over 65 and/or disabled. America doesn't have Nationalized Socialized medicine. Even if you manage to get on one of the State run programs you're laying out $100-$200/mo just for meds (God Bless the Big Pharma). Then there's Rent, food, transportation (to the doctor's appointments that are keeping you alive) etc, etc. I know a few ppl on SS Disability, and they live very, very shitty lives.

So can you tell me, why is it we can get a man on the moon but we can't take care of a few million old people and a few million disabled? Are we really that pathetic as a country that we can't just solve this problem?

I don't want to tax the rich, I want to tax the rich corporations. The share paid by corporations has dropped from about 30% in 1940, to about 12% today, see source. Individual taxes have stayed, overall at about the same level, and the gap in corporate taxes has been made up in payroll taxes, which largely come out of someone's (potential) salary.

So while taxing Bill Gates a bit more only helps a little, the real crime here is that many of the richest Americans hide their money in corporations, tax shelters, and move it through tax-exempt organizations in ways that over time have deprived the Treasury of revenue.

But TubeSteak is also right. This problem was created over 20-30 years, it may take 20-30 years to run the deficit to zero should we chose to, I would argue some deficit is good.

The American population is essentially either taking welfare or working for the Gubment.

That's the Fox News view of the world, sure. In actual reality, American workers are more productive, yet thanks to conservative economic policies have been losing income (measured in constant dollars) since the Reagan era. The number of people employed by the federal government is lower than it was in the 60s, 70s, or 80s. The number state or local government employees per capita grew a little from 1980 to 2008, almost entirely because of more teachers being hired, but declined from 2008 to 2011.

So, in reality, Americans are working more productively, getting paid less, and fewer of them are working for the government.

But keep the American voter ignorant and angry, and they'll re-elect you, even as you fsck them over.

As a non-American, I was unfamiliar with this food stamp program (we don't have specific food-oriented services here in my country, it's up to the local communities and cities to provide welfare benefits).
However, when I look at the number of participants per state, I notice the rural states (Wyoming, etc.) are way lower: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3899
My question: why is this so? Is it a problem of logistics, or is the average American farmer better off than the ones who live in the cities?

You'll be happy to find out that SNAP (aka "food stamps") is already one of the best run programs our government has ever set up in terms of efficency and lack of fraud. It is a model for effective solutions to social problems. That fraud is rampant among SNAP receipients is simply a myth--and one that has been deliberatly crafted over generations to achieve certain political goals.

Says someone who never worked at a grocery store and seen the shit the people who swipe their food stamp cards try to pull off. Oh and the inevitably make 2 transactions, one in cash for all the "goodies" that you can't buy with food stamps and one for the stapes that they are allowed.

You'll be happy to find out that SNAP (aka "food stamps") is already one of the best run programs our government has ever set up in terms of efficency and lack of fraud. It is a model for effective solutions to social problems. That fraud is rampant among SNAP receipients is simply a myth--and one that has been deliberatly crafted over generations to achieve certain political goals.

• Education: "In 1987, public colleges and universities received 3.3 times as much in revenue from state and local governments as they did from students. They now receive about 1.1 times as much from states and localities as from students." cite
• Pay: "The minimum wage of $1.60 an hour in 1968 would be $10.56 today when adjusted for inflation (cite).
• Federal Benefits: "As one can see, even single men, who get back the lowest amount of benefits for their Medicare contributions, receive almost three times what they pay in..." cite.
• And finally, the Bottom Line: "The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt. The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday. While people typically accumulate assets as they age, this wealth gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation." (cite)

In re-reading my last post I notice my tone got a bit testy among other things - I apologize, as I do for the tardiness of reply due to stuff getting in the way.

Aaargh, I hate those kinds of color-coded graphs; they're pretty, but with having a good bit of red-green color blindness... I mean, peanut butter is green. Well, isn't it? [grin] I found this, first result, which gives the same numbers in an easier to see and grasp way - I hope you'll find it OK: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258 and there are others. A while back, Randall Munroe over at xkcd.com put together his money chart, which I found illuminating. http://xkcd.com/980/

I don't dispute these figures at all, but I thank you for pointing them out.

What I refer to, tho, is the stuff that doesn't so easily show up, often because it's obscure - weird labeling, inclusion as an innocuously-named line-item in some bill, what have you. I just did a search on "corporate welfare" - dive in anywhere, really. The Cato Institute, whence comes the fine graph you present on income distribution, seems to show up a lot, as does cbpp.org. Did I have the time to get into it now, I'd want to get at more of the source data, much of which comes from government. I don't advance any particular search result as proof, but maybe evidence, and certainly entry for further delving.

Corporate stuff comes in many flavors, going back to the no-tax wild-catting during WWII to things I see in my area such as "If you don't cut our taxes in half, we're moving to $some_place_else." (The latter is considered by most to be entirely proper business practice; I can say only that it often leaves a bad taste in my mind. We've seen examples of how some of this works externally and internally going back to United Fruit and others over a hundred years ago, to the Seven Sisters from the '50s to present day, and so on. As some big companies become multi-national, some of these are becoming, trans-national, and wielding power greater than many nations. It's just business. The ramifications for policy and taxation in any one country get more problematic at best.)

Re automation - no, don't mean it Luddite-way. I just think there are some real shifts in the making. Best I can reckon, the U.S. never fully recovered just from the automation stuff starting in the automotive industry. Yes, new jobs are created by new technologies. My contention is that increasingly there will be fewer of those new jobs than those displaced - and that this combines with the simple reality that an increasing number of people will be at their own limits of being able to be educated and trained to do the new jobs, let alone possess the basic blend of abilities needed for service jobs such as burger-flipping (robotic, soon) or janitor work. (Funny, that; in hospital I saw the cleaning ladies work hard and well, but they were trained by someone who doesn't know shit from Shinola - simple, easy, quick, and _effective_ areas are missed, because the training idiot is functionally blind to what cleaning is and why it's to be done. If the robots that eventually take over much basic cleaning aren't properly programmed, that situation will not change. I'd hazard to guess that both of us have seen plenty of examples of things designed and built or programmed that are obviously not used by their vendors, because they just don't work well or easily.)

"Such government programs tend to work in the short term; but they fail in the long term as people learn how to game the system." Absolutely. Concur. Agree. Right on.

Re Congress. Nope, not central planning. Their responsibility for levies, taxes, budgets does have a bit of effect in that direction, but that's not the point. The point is they've been avoiding some issues while fiddling the numbers here and there, gaming the system for the advantage of themselves, their party, and their funders, rather than for the good of