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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
They'd just blow it all on more wars anyway.
Everyone just lost $1000 or more...even the lowest paid workers.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/01/0…
Social security is not a savings account. Those paying now, fund those on social security now.
And $1000 taken out of the paychecks of people making $50,000 or less -- core Obama supportesr (!) -- is a big tax bite!
I'm guessing we'll get a deal on the next "cliff" a day or two late also. Such outstanding role-models.
Seriously, just because the due date is the end of February, doesn't mean they can't pass the next deal tomorrow. They wait because they're childish and wish to avoid responsibility at all costs. If a student does this, he gets never ending shit. But this? Nah, can't do anything about it...
And yes, that social security tax is to fund social security. I was livid when they passed that. You know what it really meant? That folks making $100K saved over $2000. And low income folks got a pittance, because they make a pittance.
They had a Worker's Credit that phased out for higher income people that they replaced with starting to gut social security funding.
I have watched this for years.... Republicans do temp tax cuts, then point fingers at the Dems for "raising taxes." Then Obama did the social security thing -- and Goldy is saying -- oh, look the taxes are going up.
Crap crap crap. We are screwed. Like it was said above -- those spending cuts are still coming. But the tax cut has been made permanent. The Republicans won the fucking war.
Crap.
Could flip the House in the midterms if young people and minorities got themselves out to vote. Not holding my breath, but it could happen. And then we'd have a better tax scheme, and a better budget. Until then, enjoy.
In the meanwhile, Congress wrote themselves some new accounting rules back in the '80s, which allows them to count the Social Security excess collections as part of the asset side of the national budget, thereby reducing the appearance of the actual budget deficit.
So, here's the real rub. In order for the SSA to tap into their own surplus, Congress has to be willing to pay back the money they borrowed and admit the actual size of the budget deficit, and right now they look like they're more in the mood to just steal the whole thing and pretend it was "their" money all along. That's what all this blathering about "cutting entitlements" is really all about.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-01…
But i am afraid that we will be looking back at this day and wishing we had held out for a real deal.
cap gains still not taxed as high as wages!
the lower class, those workers, are going to be hit with a 2% reduction in take home pay! way to go dems, very progressive of you! (under the conservative fiction social security is a pay it forward program, not a redistributionist program; again the dems adopting the conservative frame sets us all up for more cuts later! social security and medicare are very sound if you put them on the basis of tax the rich!) and best of all
--since the income threshold is $400K for single people, thank god a one percenter like me won't have a tax bump in the rate of income tax, ohmygod what a fiscal cliff that would have been had I been forced to fork over an exra coupla thousand bucks. Why it means only four weeks a year at Sun Valley instead of six! Ah yes, far better to have fifty million people lose 2% of their take home pay than to make us near rich pay a tad more.
funny thing....liberals are actually counting this as a win. iow, the republican plan to take the economy hostage worked like a charm, and dems, in negotiating the ransom down from X to "50% of X" are fooled into thinking this is a win.the better headline would be "98% of Dems and Liberals Now Support Bush Economic Program Designed ot Starve The Beast in Incredible Move to Self Disempower Government Delegitimize Government and Legitimize the 'Taxes are Theft' Conservative Meme!!!1"
why is adoping Bush Tax Cuts, or 98% of them, a win?
The Republicans agreed to a big tax hike in exchange for - get this - an extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed, action on the farm bill, no cuts to entitlements, and all of this while keeping drastic cuts to the military and a vastly increased estate tax as future hostages.
That's some serious jujitsu right there.
the bottom fifty percent of all families will see taxes go up by a thousand or two thousand dollars a year, a huge hike. the top fifty percent of all families is in the main, protected. only the tippy top sees taxes go up. what obama gave away was the baseline notion that taxes are bad and should be cut, that somehow going to the clinton era tax rates is unfair and can't be done, thus permanently ensuring the % of gdp for gummint is lower than it needs to be, undercutting the financial premise of the entire liberal program and moving thewhole debate over to the right again. btw the big tax hike? includes lots of things that keep taxes lower for the top than they were under clinton. the extension of unemp bennies is good, true, but all we did was rescue that from hostage takers setting us up for more ransom in teh future. no cuts to entitlements? well we should cut them in the form of lifting the cap on the income subject to fica. avoiding drastic cuts to miliarty is now a good thing? okay, let's keep adopting more and more of the gop program. nice rightward shift you display there. a vastly increased estate tax? not really, it's still far lower than under clinton, a lower rate and a higher thresshold. we're just retreating all the time it's two steps back one step forward and you and obama and all the dems point to the one step forward and call it progress. we basically adopted MOST of the bush tax cuts PERMANENTLY so to speak. how is this a gain?
Also, without passing the farm bill, even families who remain exempt from paying taxes would spend hundreds more a year on milk. Passing the farm bill also takes the food-stamps hostage away from Republicans in future negotiations.
And if you think only after such a cliff that Republicans could be shamed into lowering taxes for the middle class in exchange for nothing at all, or not holding the unemployed and those on food-stamps hostage for tax cuts on the rich, you haven't been paying attention to Republicans. They have no such shame to draw upon.
When we complain about the Republicans' my-way-or-the-highway approach to compromise, it's hypocritical to complain when Obama doesn't take the same course.
Capital gains rates and carried interest did not reset to the true median tax level of 40 percent taxes they have been for most of the last 100 years, so basically we middle class got screwed so rich people could get richer.
The progressive argument (which I agree with) is that social security isn't an "entitlement," it is insurance that was bought and paid for. You can argue whether the insurance is a good bargain or not, but indeed -- you pay into the system, if you live long enough or leave dependents behind, you will get a return for those "insurance premiums".
No progressive who whines about the "payroll tax increase" can ever again say -- "hey, that isn't an entitlement, we paid for it". STOP WHINING. If you don't stop whining about it, then you are sounding exactly as if it is indeed an "entitlement" and not something that you "paid for."
Crap.
We live in a great country with great ideals about helping each other, and helping the world. IT TAKES MONEY. And we need to pay for the things we want. So let's pay our "fair share" of taxes and stop acting as if we are horribly burdened. We pay a pittance compared to other developed nations, and a pittance compared to what we used to pay.
And yeah, it isn't red vs blue. But there is a pattern -- the reds pass "temporary" tax cuts when they have the power and the blues are probably quite happy, at least politically, to let them extend once they have "the power". Over and over.
And the debt climbs. And the deficit climbs. And everyone points at everyone else, rather than take responsibility and PAY THEIR FRIGGING TAXES like grownups. Dang, am I pissed.
If you are truly low income, the tax isn't going to be much. And if you are truly low income, you will continue to get the Earned Income Credit, which was designed to offset paying into the social security system.
If you are making $100K -- sorry, zero sympathy here. That is a lot of income, if you haven't bought a bunch of stuff you can't afford. The bargain period is over, time to go back to the real world and pay your insurance premiums.
If I sound like a Republican, I'm not. See @22 above. This is NOT A VICTORY. The starve-the-government Republicans have won the whole war and I am sick to my stomach about it.