Economics is like quantum mechanics, the moment you measure something and establish a rule for it, it decides to change signs and bury its head in the ground.
Who benefits from the reductions in the personal income tax contained in the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts? According to data from the Tax Policy Center, a joint initiative of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, the reductions will be worth on average about 2.5 percent of income for all households in 2009 if the president gets his way and makes the tax cuts permanent.
The cuts, however, total 5.2 percent of income for households with adjusted gross income of $500,000 to $1 million and 6.2 percent of income for those households with adjusted gross income in excess of $1 million. How about the repeal of the estate tax? Fewer than one percent of estates pay any estate tax at all, and roughly two-thirds of the tax is paid by the wealthiest one percent of the income distribution.
What does this have to do with Social Security? The Social Security surplus has helped drive down federal debt by $1.46 trillion between 1983 and 2003. For fiscal years 2005 through 2009, the Congressional Budget Office projects a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund of just over $1 trillion and a deficit in the rest of the budget of $2.49 trillion. Not only will that $2.49 trillion deficit in the rest of the budget entirely consume the Social Security surplus anticipated over the next five years, it will wipe out the Social Security surplus built up over the previous 20 years to finance baby boom retirements.
Now we get to the third move in Social Security Shell Game. Rather than condemn the tax cuts that have entirely spent the surplus accumulated as a result of the commission he headed to save Social Security, Greenspan instead recommends cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits to the baby boomers to help rein in the deficit.
If you believe Bush has hurt the economy, then I suggest you show us HOW exactly he did it. What policy did he enact that put us into recession? It's an impossible question for you to answer, because any policy Bush would have put into place would take 2-3 years to become effective due to economic lag. Policy does not go into effect immediately, and even when it does, it takes a period of years to have results. So let's see: The Nasdaq began it's decline in March of 2000. By December 2000, we were being told we were in a global economic slowdown. By March 2001, before Bush got his tax cuts passed, we were in official "recession". Then in May 2001, we get tax cuts, followed by 9/11, and then more tax cuts. The recession officially ended in mid to late 2002. Say what you like about the deficit, but you cannot show anyting Bush did to hurt the economy.
As I've always said Bush didn't put us into recession. We were way overdue for that. He just kept us there longer and deeper than we would have been normally with his stupid policies and stupid spending ( the bill for that little war in Iraq alone stretches to the horizon ) Nah, nah, he did do anything to hurt the economy. And love that deficit! No matter what I said or what proof I gave you you still wouldn't see it because of your own personal blind spot. Hell, you wouldn't admit to what CNN called " the worst unemployment since WWII "!
Things still aren't back to normal after 5 years.
Hence Bush's recent need to revise his jobs growth estimate.
Hey! I've seen some hamburgers that looked manufactured!
Well you keep sticking your fingers in your ears and making small animal noises. Myself and many others are going to be voting for the other guy so we won't have to live with another 4 years of this garbage.
That's all fantasy. There is no separate accounting in the US budget. The payroll tax and the income tax go into the same pot and gets sloshed around by whomever for the greatest political benefit. The shell game is thinking it's all separate and then slamming whoever is in the White House or Congress for whatever you want.
That's right - it all goes into the same pot, and that's exactly the point. That's why what's happening with the rest of the budget is important to the solvency of SS. If you screw up everything in the rest of the budget, you screw up SS. If you are fiscally responsible, you help SS. That wouldn't be true if SS and the rest of the budget were truly separate.
I just heard an awesome sound bite from Rep. Tom DeLay:
"Either he's not sincere about his spending, he's not sincere about his tax cuts, he's unconcerned about the deficit, or they didn't teach him arithmetic in that European boarding school."
Aside from the bit about European vs. New England boarding school, if you didn't know Mr. DeLay was the speaker, could you tell who was being talked about?
The biggest risk now facing Social Security is political. Will those who hate the system use scare tactics and fuzzy math to bring it down?
After Alan Greenspan's call for cuts in Social Security benefits, Republican members of Congress declared that the answer is to create private retirement accounts. It's amazing that they are still peddling this snake oil; it's even more amazing that journalists continue to let them get away with it. Yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, a writer judiciously declared that "personal accounts alone won't cure Social Security's ills." I guess that's true; similarly, eating doughnuts alone won't cause you to lose weight. Why is it so hard to say clearly that privatization would worsen, not improve, Social Security's finances?
Should we consider modest reforms that reduce the expenses or widen the revenue base of Social Security? Sure. But beware of those who claim that we must destroy the system in order to save it.__
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan strayed away from his charter once again to warn about the people's entitlement programs - Social Security and Medicare - becoming unaffordable. He suggested cuts in benefits to reduce deficits.
In the same breath, Mr. Greenspan urged that Mr. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy - a huge cause of the growing federal deficits - be made permanent. His priorities should come as no surprise, for Mr. Greenspan is the ultimate oligarch.
The hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare giveaways annually, from local to state to federal governments, are not his concern. He is comfortable with this kind of direct and indirect corporate socialism where profits are less taxed and costs are socialized on the backs of individual taxpayers.
Instead, what bothers Mr. Greenspan are the social insurance programs for tens of millions of Americans-most of them the coming elderly. He raises the spectre of social security insolvency because fewer workers will be supporting retirees. He testified that "it is important that we tell people who are about to retire what it is they will have." If so, why didn't the Chairman recall the projections by the Social Security trustees who tell us that the retirement fund is solid until 2042 without any changes or benefit cuts, based on an average GDP growth rate of 1.7 percent annually? The latter figure is very conservative. For the past 50 years the average GDP growth rate has been well over three percent.
At 1.7 percent, after 2042 without any changes, the decline in benefits would be gradual. At over three percent growth rates, benefits would continue beyond that date. Curious, isn't it, that the Chairman would ignore the corporate lobbying causes of the federal deficits, such as corporate tax shelters, loopholes, subsidies, handouts, giveaways and so forth. Why, if corporations and the wealthy were taxed at the rates prevailing in the prosperous 1960s, the deficits would be no more, quite soon.
Medicare is another matter. Its precarious future state is hostage to staggering annual price increases by the health care and drug industries which could be addressed by an efficient single payer health insurance system.
Mr. Greenspan chose not to mention the budget busting corporate bonanzas embedded in the $540 billion ten-year prescription drug deal. The massive drug industry lobbying battalions raised their champagne glasses when they got a ban on Uncle Sam negotiating drug price discounts for medicines paid for by the government. There was no mention of that lurking Niagara of red ink, corporate profiteering by the Chairman. Mr. Greenspan needs to be more introspective about why he focuses on benefits for the people that stimulate economic demand and ignores budgets and handouts for the corporations. It is not enough for him to pronounce the tautology that the latter stimulate economic growth. For whom? The increasing number of unemployed uninsured and undefended workers, whose white collar and blue collar jobs are being exported to very low wage authoritarian countries?
The Chairman has serious trouble criticizing the corporate state, including doing anything about the consumer credit abuses that the Federal Reserve directly is supposed to stop, like predatory lending. Reaction by the Democrats - John Kerry and John Edwards - was one of proper outrage to Mr. Greenspan's remarks. In their mind they may have been regretting why President Bill Clinton re-nominated the Republican Greenspan to another four-year term in 2000.
I agree with him 100%. Greenspan must be replaced.
Comments
2-3 years, right?
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/edi...he_shell_game/
Who benefits from the reductions in the personal income tax contained in the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts? According to data from the Tax Policy Center, a joint initiative of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, the reductions will be worth on average about 2.5 percent of income for all households in 2009 if the president gets his way and makes the tax cuts permanent.
The cuts, however, total 5.2 percent of income for households with adjusted gross income of $500,000 to $1 million and 6.2 percent of income for those households with adjusted gross income in excess of $1 million. How about the repeal of the estate tax? Fewer than one percent of estates pay any estate tax at all, and roughly two-thirds of the tax is paid by the wealthiest one percent of the income distribution.
What does this have to do with Social Security? The Social Security surplus has helped drive down federal debt by $1.46 trillion between 1983 and 2003. For fiscal years 2005 through 2009, the Congressional Budget Office projects a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund of just over $1 trillion and a deficit in the rest of the budget of $2.49 trillion. Not only will that $2.49 trillion deficit in the rest of the budget entirely consume the Social Security surplus anticipated over the next five years, it will wipe out the Social Security surplus built up over the previous 20 years to finance baby boom retirements.
Now we get to the third move in Social Security Shell Game. Rather than condemn the tax cuts that have entirely spent the surplus accumulated as a result of the commission he headed to save Social Security, Greenspan instead recommends cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits to the baby boomers to help rein in the deficit.
Originally posted by SDW2001
jimmac,
If you believe Bush has hurt the economy, then I suggest you show us HOW exactly he did it. What policy did he enact that put us into recession? It's an impossible question for you to answer, because any policy Bush would have put into place would take 2-3 years to become effective due to economic lag. Policy does not go into effect immediately, and even when it does, it takes a period of years to have results. So let's see: The Nasdaq began it's decline in March of 2000. By December 2000, we were being told we were in a global economic slowdown. By March 2001, before Bush got his tax cuts passed, we were in official "recession". Then in May 2001, we get tax cuts, followed by 9/11, and then more tax cuts. The recession officially ended in mid to late 2002. Say what you like about the deficit, but you cannot show anyting Bush did to hurt the economy.
As I've always said Bush didn't put us into recession. We were way overdue for that. He just kept us there longer and deeper than we would have been normally with his stupid policies and stupid spending ( the bill for that little war in Iraq alone stretches to the horizon ) Nah, nah, he did do anything to hurt the economy. And love that deficit! No matter what I said or what proof I gave you you still wouldn't see it because of your own personal blind spot. Hell, you wouldn't admit to what CNN called " the worst unemployment since WWII "!
Things still aren't back to normal after 5 years.
Hence Bush's recent need to revise his jobs growth estimate.
Hey! I've seen some hamburgers that looked manufactured!
Well you keep sticking your fingers in your ears and making small animal noises. Myself and many others are going to be voting for the other guy so we won't have to live with another 4 years of this garbage.
OUT THE DOOR IN 2004!
Originally posted by chu_bakka
Bush's Ponzi SS Scheme
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/edi...he_shell_game/
...
That's all fantasy. There is no separate accounting in the US budget. The payroll tax and the income tax go into the same pot and gets sloshed around by whomever for the greatest political benefit. The shell game is thinking it's all separate and then slamming whoever is in the White House or Congress for whatever you want.
Originally posted by chu_bakka
You just made my point for me Scott. Thanks.
That's right - it all goes into the same pot, and that's exactly the point. That's why what's happening with the rest of the budget is important to the solvency of SS. If you screw up everything in the rest of the budget, you screw up SS. If you are fiscally responsible, you help SS. That wouldn't be true if SS and the rest of the budget were truly separate.
"Either he's not sincere about his spending, he's not sincere about his tax cuts, he's unconcerned about the deficit, or they didn't teach him arithmetic in that European boarding school."
Aside from the bit about European vs. New England boarding school, if you didn't know Mr. DeLay was the speaker, could you tell who was being talked about?
The biggest risk now facing Social Security is political. Will those who hate the system use scare tactics and fuzzy math to bring it down?
After Alan Greenspan's call for cuts in Social Security benefits, Republican members of Congress declared that the answer is to create private retirement accounts. It's amazing that they are still peddling this snake oil; it's even more amazing that journalists continue to let them get away with it. Yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, a writer judiciously declared that "personal accounts alone won't cure Social Security's ills." I guess that's true; similarly, eating doughnuts alone won't cause you to lose weight. Why is it so hard to say clearly that privatization would worsen, not improve, Social Security's finances?
Should we consider modest reforms that reduce the expenses or widen the revenue base of Social Security? Sure. But beware of those who claim that we must destroy the system in order to save it.__
(See the rest at the link below)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/op...05KRUG.html?hp
Beware of Snake Oil.
Alan Greenspan is the Ultimate Oligarch
by Ralph Nader
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan strayed away from his charter once again to warn about the people's entitlement programs - Social Security and Medicare - becoming unaffordable. He suggested cuts in benefits to reduce deficits.
In the same breath, Mr. Greenspan urged that Mr. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy - a huge cause of the growing federal deficits - be made permanent. His priorities should come as no surprise, for Mr. Greenspan is the ultimate oligarch.
The hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare giveaways annually, from local to state to federal governments, are not his concern. He is comfortable with this kind of direct and indirect corporate socialism where profits are less taxed and costs are socialized on the backs of individual taxpayers.
Instead, what bothers Mr. Greenspan are the social insurance programs for tens of millions of Americans-most of them the coming elderly. He raises the spectre of social security insolvency because fewer workers will be supporting retirees. He testified that "it is important that we tell people who are about to retire what it is they will have." If so, why didn't the Chairman recall the projections by the Social Security trustees who tell us that the retirement fund is solid until 2042 without any changes or benefit cuts, based on an average GDP growth rate of 1.7 percent annually? The latter figure is very conservative. For the past 50 years the average GDP growth rate has been well over three percent.
At 1.7 percent, after 2042 without any changes, the decline in benefits would be gradual. At over three percent growth rates, benefits would continue beyond that date. Curious, isn't it, that the Chairman would ignore the corporate lobbying causes of the federal deficits, such as corporate tax shelters, loopholes, subsidies, handouts, giveaways and so forth. Why, if corporations and the wealthy were taxed at the rates prevailing in the prosperous 1960s, the deficits would be no more, quite soon.
Medicare is another matter. Its precarious future state is hostage to staggering annual price increases by the health care and drug industries which could be addressed by an efficient single payer health insurance system.
Mr. Greenspan chose not to mention the budget busting corporate bonanzas embedded in the $540 billion ten-year prescription drug deal. The massive drug industry lobbying battalions raised their champagne glasses when they got a ban on Uncle Sam negotiating drug price discounts for medicines paid for by the government. There was no mention of that lurking Niagara of red ink, corporate profiteering by the Chairman. Mr. Greenspan needs to be more introspective about why he focuses on benefits for the people that stimulate economic demand and ignores budgets and handouts for the corporations. It is not enough for him to pronounce the tautology that the latter stimulate economic growth. For whom? The increasing number of unemployed uninsured and undefended workers, whose white collar and blue collar jobs are being exported to very low wage authoritarian countries?
The Chairman has serious trouble criticizing the corporate state, including doing anything about the consumer credit abuses that the Federal Reserve directly is supposed to stop, like predatory lending. Reaction by the Democrats - John Kerry and John Edwards - was one of proper outrage to Mr. Greenspan's remarks. In their mind they may have been regretting why President Bill Clinton re-nominated the Republican Greenspan to another four-year term in 2000.
I agree with him 100%. Greenspan must be replaced.