UPDATE: There is more on this from National Review Online, including a letter complaining that Republicans are stupid because they don’t count FICA as “paying taxes.”
There is an argument made, even by Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, that the FICA payroll tax is regressive. The bottom 50% of American workers pay no income tax. The left then responds that the payroll tax is still paid by that segment of society and that negates the argument of the right. Let’s look at how that plays out in real life.
As you see, the lowest quintile of income group pays a net minus 27% tax rate in the payroll tax. That is, they get 27% more than they pay in during a lifetime of work. Of course, the beneficiaries of the Social Security system have to wait until they are 67 or disabled to collect those benefits. That is a form of forced saving and would work out if Congress had not spent the Social Security Trust Fund on other matters, leaving only IOUs behind to pay the benefits.
The Anglo-Saxon society was built on the Protestant Ethic of deferred gratification. That is why those who endure poverty and hard work to get an education (a real education) or to complete an apprenticeship for a trade, are rewarded later while those who chose big screen TVs and flashy cars often never get ahead. The plan for a satisfying life does not include winning the lottery. This can be difficult to explain to those who have not had a decent introduction to life from caring parents. Even so, some still figure it out. Some of them use the military to get an education when other avenues are closed. Ambition and intelligence will often emerge from unlikely places.
You would think a Nobel laureate could figure this out.
Doc,
Your blog… my blog… the sites folks like us visit… our “knowledge peers” are well aware of realities such as the one this thread topic focuses upon.
The problem is…
(*SIGH*)
We don’t have many peers.
(Oh… we millions… but we’re talking a nation of 300 million plus!)
I’m guessing even most of our social-economic peers (ok… your peers….) (*GRIN*) don’t quite “get it” in terms of connecting the dots with regard to the disconnect between thinking it would somehow be “fair” to lift the cap on social security pay-ins without also lifting the cap on social security payouts!
Don’t get me wrong; I applaud you for fighting the good fight; but as I often lament… (*SIGH*)… it’s hopeless; it’s over.
BILL
Well, I don’t expect to win any battles with a blog but it is interesting to post your opinions and then go back a year or two later and see how they work out. Comments, even those like the recent lady which disagree, are helpful in sorting out your own thoughts.
How weird that a Roman Catholic would use a loaded term like “Protestant work ethic,” which, had you any grasp of history, you’d know was a specifically anti-Catholic remark.
As for other people’s deferred gratification: You’re now, by your own admissions throughout this blog, completely without liquidity because of your instant gratification of multiple divorces (including irresponsibly late-in-life siring of a new set of children), your curious need to buy two now non-unloadable houses in markets that have both totally tanked, a shiny little boat you just had to have then had to sell (likely because you’re always in need of quick cash), a refusal to save because you apparently spent your entire income…really, a lifetime of pretty much instantly gratifying your every whim at the expense of your financial security and, more importantly, your children’s emotional well-being.
Someone your age really shouldn’t be in this position — but most people your age have better judgment, financial sense and self-restraint than you do. And virtually everyone has more self-awareness than you do.
Craig, how about paying me the $120,000 you owe me instead of these little diatribes under fake e-mail addresses? I traced the last one to Texas where you probably have gone since all your other ventures have failed, including your marriages. I earned your hostility by providing some lawyers, who tracked me down, with information about your previous financial adventures. They were defending a hospital in Corpus Christi that you had skipped out on, in spite of a contract to stay a minimum period to repay them for funding your practice. Then you had the temerity to sue them ! Well, we know how that turned out, don’t we.
You have just enough information about me to make nasty innuendo but not enough to get it right.
Oh, you dear, dim old coot. You really don’t know anything about IPs and what’s possible.
Every single piece of information I referenced was provided by you on this blog. I’m not making innuendos; I’m restating the facts you provided. Your whole history is here for everyone to see and mock when you obtusely and hilariously accuse others of the very things you do in spades. It never seems to occur to you not to pitch stones from one of your glass houses — you’re just that unself-aware.
If that guy really owes you $120K, I don’t doubt that you can REALLY use it right now, what with all your financial and social errors and the hole you’ve gotten yourself into.
Prox, and all your other names, this is the last comment I will allow without a valid e-mail address. If you are not Craig, you have his ethics. I have made no secret of my divorces. Your innuendo about my finances and other things are made up of whole cloth and are malicious, leading me to believe that you have an incentive to attack me anonymously. Now, who could have such a motive? Craig is one since he declared bankruptcy and seems to be fleeing creditors all over the Southwest. You certainly sound like him.
As for the rest, you know nothing about me and my circumstances. But why the stalking ? I don’t have many enemies. Craig is the only one I can think of with the twisted sense of injury to do so. The fact that the lawsuit of his came up about the time you started this stalking suggests that you are Craig.
If you are not, then you have no motive except your own feelings of inadequacy. Post a valid e-mail address or you are done here.
Looking at the doc’s resume as well as “knowing” what kind of man he is from his writings, I won’t hesitate to state THANK GOD for Dr. Michael Kennedy.
It seems quite clear to me that weighing the good a man does on earth against the bad… Dr. Kennedy’s name clearly belongs on “the good list.”
BILL
The internet Left is quick to launch a personal attack when their politics are threatened, a trait of people who need emotional satisfaction from politics. I was taken aback by the preening and bragging from Obama/Pelosi when health care reform passed, as if they had pulled the body politic from the mouth of a lion. I think we would be better served if politics were more like insurance actuaries: in the back room with green eye shades, divvying the money to this or that account. The celebrity of politicians does not serve us well.
As for Dr. K’s finances, on some boards I visit such stats would have him denounced as a capitalist roader who made money on the backs of the poor, and his assest should be seized and distributed, so you can’t win amongst the kooks.