If anybody can come up with anything other than a political argument for the deal on the “fiscal cliff”, summarized in a table here, I’d certainly like to hear it.
If you’re tempted to present a social argument, note that not only has the payroll tax been restored, because of the ObamaCare surtax it’s actually increasing. This deal is redistributionist, all right. It’s redistributionist from the lowest 90% of income earners to the top 10% of income earners and redistributionist from the top 1% of income earners to the top 10% of income earners.
One waggish summary I’ve heard of the deal is that President Obama opened with a proposal for $1.6 trillion in additional taxes, Speaker Boehner responded with $800 billion in additional taxes, and they agreed on $600 billion in additional taxes. With the $600 billion in additional taxes over ten years and $600 billion in additional spending over ten yearrs, there’s certainly no fiscal benefit and practically no benefit as stimulus.
Hope and change you can believe in. I’m sure Michael is very, very happy with this (sarcasm for those who missed it).
I am not surprised, after all Obama knows who he really works for and it isn’t for the 90%.
Rough estimate it costs me 15 grand next year. I’d love to hear how I’m on the receiving end of redistribution. Are they subsidizing whiskey and no one told me?
Depends on what you are also “getting” Michael. You’re aren’t paying $15,000 net.
As far as I know I’m not getting anything. I’m nine years from SS/Medicare eligibility (I think) so that’s $130,000 in new taxes between now and the day I start getting anything. (Again, as far as I know — I could stroke out tomorrow.) If there’s some 130k benefit over and above what I’d already been entitled to, I’d love to hear about it.
Watching these ‘negotiations,’ was like the ominous task of looking at sausage being made — distasteful — the blending of the two political party heads producing nothing but a rip-off for the people.
Also, isn’t it a bit silly to pretend that ending the temporary payroll cut is a tax increase? It was always a temporary measure.
So I’m not seeing the logic behind the premise of this post. I’m paying an extra 15 large, getting nothing back that I know of, and that money will go to all the usual functions of government, many of which do benefit me (law enforcement, defense, the CDC and the FDA etc…) but none of which will suddenly start benefitting me more than before.
So I’m really not seeing how I (or my ilk) come out ahead.
I’m going OT in this post, sort of a hat-tip to the wonderful fiscal cliff deal that was consummated, and as an ode to the great 4 years we have in front of us!
Jay Nordlinger penned kind of an obituary for the candidacy of Mitt Romney. It was gutsy and no-holds-barred, and I liked it! Superb Mitt Romney.
After all the guff and dirt that Romney collected before, during and after his run, this piece was like having the windshield cleaned and seeing the man for what he had to offer, versus the smut created, by both rigid conservatives and the other side of the aisle, in order to derail his reputation first, and then mock his agenda and ideas throughout 2012.
Lastly, Nordlinger sums it up this way — rather crudely but, IMO, totally on the mark!
Well, jan, if Romney did mean those things, he was entirely sunk beneath a clown show of cretinous and creepy wife-beating, racist throwbacks to the frickin’ “Golden Age” of America — pre-Civil Rights and Feminazis.
And of course, he did select the unspeakably unattractive Ryan as his VP choice. Gahhh!
michael, dave’s point is that the tax increases are going to pay the salaries of people making over $100k like doctors, lawyers and other government employees in the top 10% of income earners.
Overhearing our employees this morning at the coffeemaker, it sounds like they are surprised about the payroll tax increase and expect it to be fixed later. (I’ll add it to my growing list of things people think will be dealt with later) I think they are wrong, but Obama’s stance is going to feel hypocritical to working/middle class people that he said he protected with this deal.
We obviously have a difference of opinion regarding the two men, ma chere.
I found Ryan’s boyish good looks quite attractive. Cantor OTOH.
Oh, PD hon, you don’t have the gym shower blues, do you?
The premise of the post is I don’t think the deal that was arrived at accomplishes anything but political objectives. It doesn’t produce stimulus because the tax increases offset the spending increases. It doesn’t improve our fiscal condition because the the tax increases offset the spending increases. It doesn’t reduce income inequality because it takes money from people among the top 1% of income earners and (mostly) individuals earning less than $113,700 and gives it (mostly) to individuals earning more than $113,700 (but less than $400,000).
PD:
I assume the doctors you’re talking about would be performing services paid for by Medicare and Medicaid. Services that were already baked in, right? I was already on the hook for that. And the value of those services does accrue to the people thus served, no? Who are not generally wealthy — not Medicaid patients certainly, and not most Medicare patients. So, by your lights I’m paying a doctor to care for a poor person or an elderly person, most of whom are not making what I make. So, still not getting it.
I get that doctors are overpaid, but I suspect the people at the top of the doctor food chain are not getting rich off Medicare or Medicaid, they’re getting rich off services to rich people — plastic surgery, elective surgery, sleep clinics and executive physicals, high end doctoring. Medicare and Medicaid bargain for lower prices than I pay. If you want to be a rich doctor do you locate in Mootown, Nebraska? No, you locate in Beverly Hills.
The truth is that buying medical care for poor people is exactly what I’d like my 15 grand to go to. Since medical care is performed by doctors, obviously they’ll have to be paid. But I find that most people do insist on being paid.
The big receivers of subsidies are people earning more than FICA max ($113,700) and less than $400,000. Doctors, lawyers, people in finance earning less than the top income earners, top level government bureaucrats, some business executives (middle managers, owners of small companies, some others).
You’re in the top 1% of income earners. As I said in the post, the winners are those in the top 90-99%.
Janis
Nothing wrong to agree to disagree. As for me, with President Elect “”I Won” Obama, we embraced the silver bullet, instead of missing it.
Dave:
Well, of course it doesn’t accomplish much. But this is gridlock Washington. Of course it’s largely political theater, which we could discuss in another thread.
But I think it’s a different political game to pretend that reversing the temporary cut in payroll taxes is a tax increase. I’d see it more a sale on retirement plans. We all got a little savings last week during the big blow-out sale, but tomorrow it’s back to everyday pricing. If you assume that reversion was always destined to happen, then the new tax rates still represent the well-off paying more. As a matter of fact, no matter how you look at it, the well-off are paying more.
Working people are back to contributing to their retirement, rich people are paying more, hopefully we can borrow a wee bit less and pass less debt on to our children.
I’m personally ambivalent about the payroll tax, but the median worker ($32,140) is going to get a $642.80 tax increase this year. Its going to hurt and they don’t have savings to fall back on. As a tax on labor, it will marginally hurt the unemployment rate (see, e.g. Matt Yglesias on this). But I’m ambivalent because my preferred solution is to switch, at least partially, to a consumption tax.
I find it odd that the Alternative Minimum Tax is “permanently” fixed. This was the most obvious way to back-end income taxes for those gaming the system. High-tax states didn’t like it (though many have state versions of the AMT) and low-tax states should have been ambivalent, but their representatives are ideologically opposed to progressive taxation.
michael, there is gridlock and Obama wasn’t going to get everything he wanted, but I think his priority of taxing the 1% was the least important for making his preferred programs sustainable.
Here is the analysis of the tax changes from the Tax Policy Center:
Link
You don’t drive on the roads or freeways? Nothing from public health measures (hint: reduced disease incidence is an external benefit that accrues to you whether you like it or not), nothing from sewer systems? Nothing from air traffic control? Nothing from national defense (hint: you definitely benefit from this whether you like it or not)? And sure you could stroke out tomorrow and get nothing from SS, but the same is true for everyone. The point of SS is that it is there if you need it and it reduces your need to save today…so you can consume more today…so you do benefit. Same with Medicare.
So, please…learn to count first.
Social Security is not a retirement plan.
I’m not sure what you are talking about here, but payroll taxes are highly regressive. Especially with the income cap.
The money a person pays into Social Security is not “theirs” like it is when they make contributions to a 401k type plan. The money worker today pays is used to send a check to beneficiary today. Social Security is a transfer program, not a retirement plan. That people usually get it during retirement does not change this.
In absolute numbers sure, but as a share of their income, no way. Not by a long ways in fact. This is why so many find the payroll tax so onerous, it is highly regressive. Here is a very simple example:
Tax rate: 15%
Income cap: $1,000
My Income: $100
Your Income: $2,000
My Tax: $15
Your Tax: $150
My effective tax rate: 15%
Your effective tax rate: 7.5%
In the end you’ll also likely get more money back than I will as well and you’ll likely have more savings. And because you keep advocating for this program you set yourself up as some kind of “good guy” while I point out it is a bad plan and needs to be seriously overhauled, I’m an asshole.
Seriously Michael, you need to pull your head out of you butt.
Steve V:
1) Please see this paragraph of mine:
Which preceded your opening paragraph.
2) Of course SS is a retirement plan. It’s the only retirement plan for most Americans. Go ask some.
3) I understand very well that SS is a transfer. I also understand it is regressive. And yet that doesn’t change the fact that a working man’s payroll taxes go to support a program that is his only retirement plan.
4) Rich people “paying more” refers to the fact that the wealthy wil be paying more than before. More than they were last year. As I said, my share looks like 15 grand more than I paid last year. Hence, more.
Just as when I said I wasn’t getting anything back, I meant any more than previously. In other words, I’ll pay more than I did, but not so far as I know receive any additional benefit.
I think you misinterpreted much of what I meant to express.
By the way, my effective tax rate is pretty darned close to the top tax rate. Maybe I just have a really bad accountant, but it sure looks to me like I paid just a little under a third of my total income to the feds.
I’d really love to find out about all these wonderful tax avoidance methods we’re all assumed to have. Then a fountain of youth woud be excellent, too.
That’s because most of your income is, presumably, royalty income. That’s taxed at the same rate as wage income or self-employment income, right up to paying FICA on the first $113,700 of it. Your situation is similar to that of a physician who derives most of his income from wages or self-employment income.
Most of the top .1% of income earners have a substantial amount of investment income, realized as capital gains, etc. That’s where the avoidance methods are.
That we are running massive deficits indicates you are getting considerably more than you are paying.
I dont blanche at the payroll taxes. Everyone needs skin in the game. Look at the current discourse: “dont worry, I’ll just tax the 2% to pay for your goodies.” Its a lynch mob exhortation.
Michael – “accountants won’t help you, prayin’ wont do you no good. When the levee breaks got no place to go.” I’ve been hearing about my incompetant accountants from lefties for years. Mysterious tax shilds, you see. Balls.
Money is fungible. Talk of how your tax dollars pay for roads and such is just gibberish. It pays for transfer payments. We have more than we need for roads and the poor, we just dont spend it there. We recycle it to the middle and upper middle class…………and the government takes a cut.
I couldn’t agree more with Dave. This is all a charade. Total BS. No spending cuts or spending rate reductions. I was surprised that the payroll tax was re-ignited. But they have funded govt with the politically popular soak the rich crap for all of what, now? A couple weeks? Obama voted present, as usual. No leadership in any DNA molecule in him, just “look at me!!” Back to Hawaii, after the breathless reporting is over. I’m a private sector guy. We’d have fired his sorry ass long ago.
I have for a long time noted thast the economic and political realities have shut off any hope of anything material on the tax side, except for dribs and drabs from the rich which make political hay, but are economically mongoloid in nature. The real issue has been debt capacity – borrowing. Anyone watch bond yields today? If not, WTFU.
It’s all pretty disgusting in my opinion. Maybe not exactly fiddling while Rome burns, but it’s in that vein.
It was a manufactured crisis, created for political purposes and the resolution was even more political – it was about little more that gaining partisan tactical advantage.
Drew:
Yeah, your favorite “private sector guy” tried that. He ended up bent over and was last seen crying in his car elevator while all his “private sector” minions tried to explain how they’d been so outclassed by a “community organizer.”
Sorry, Drew, but what little was left of Superior Randian Private Sector God after the meltdown of 2007-8 was cremated and flushed down the toilet by Mitt “Data Guy” Romney.
You’d be better off admitting the truth, which is that it’s not just our politicians who don’t know how to manage this complex machine we have, but also the businessmen. Incompetence is not confined to one sector.
1) I cant find the $600 billion in spending. I have seen $300 billion listed in other posts.
2) Loved the part about $5 million being a pittance.
Steve
Its nice snark, Michael. Go whack off on your Romney mojo and come back to us. But lets get back to reality.
This isn’t a College Bowl Game. Every post from you in 12-18 months seems to indicate you think so. Hooray for us!!!!! We are winning!!!!
Meanwhile, back in the real world, unemployment (fudged numbers as they are) are at record levels. GDP is nowhere. The mother of all budget negotiations – THE FISCAL CLIFF!!!!!!!!! – was a two bit tax increase with no spending considerations. Pathetic doesn’t describe it well enough. We are on the road to fiscal calamity.
And your hero? LOOK AT ME!!!! AINT I PRETTY!!!?? LOOK AT MY SMILE. IM GOING ON THE VIEW!!!!! BLAME IT ON CONGRESS!! I’M JUST A BYSTANDER!! MICHELLE HAS GREAT ARMS!! AINT HAWAII GREAT!!! The planes a bitch, I’m tellin ya.
I defy you to tell me how in any material way Obama has addressed our fiscal situation. I also defy you to tell me how it is not in fact deteriorating under his stewardship.
The clock is ticking, Michael. Credit cards hit there limit. THe bond market is getting wrestless…….
Yeah, yeah, a bad moon a risin’, trouble on the way.
This is so totally different than the last 58 years of my life during which I had to endure the inevitable triumph of communism, the inevitable nuclear war, the inevitable race war, the inevitable population bomb and subsequent worldwide famine, the inevitable purchase of the entire United States by Arabs and also Japanese, the inevitable freezing er, roasting of the planet, the inevitable descent into a police state and on and on and on.
You know how many years I’ve been hearing that this time, for sure, we’re all going bankrupt? At least since Reagan, which means at least three decades. Probably before that, too, but I may have been stoned during earlier jeremiads.
Where’s the Europocalypse? How come I don’t hear about that any more and how Greece will bankrupt Germany and destroy the world? What about the way Obama was going to destroy capitalism by bailing out GM which would inevitably crash and burn? Have we forgotten all about how everyone would let their companies go broke because of GM? Has China called in our debt yet and reduced us to vassalage? Is gas at 10 dollars a gallon yet? Is California depopulated yet? (It is quiet down in Tiburon. So maybe.)
Here, Drew, just for you, I’m going to predict the future. In the future medical costs will drop. You know why? Because what goes up comes down. (See California real estate.) Despite this, in the future government will consume a slightly larger piece of the pie. You know why? Because that’s how it is in modern western civilization. In the future life will be somewhat different than it is now, and we will survive it, and then we will decide we actually prefer it.
Now, far enough in the future we get smacked by an asteroid, or some bug mutates and kills us all. Or else zombies. Or some super-advanced Canadian attack force conquers us. But the deficit ain’t gonna kill us all.
How’s the hand, by the way?
Oh, and Romney was an incompetent. He didn’t just lose, he was a sad clown who deserved to lose. As a “private sector guy” myself, I’d have fired him and kept the guy who, you know, ran the organization that everyone in politics will be studying for the next twenty years. It just seems to me a better idea to retain the winner and fire the screw-up. But hey, run your business however you like.
Micheal
First and foremost, I note you exalt the politician. And yet it is politics that has got us in this mess. Suit yourself. But this is exalting the problem.
As for economic reality. I looked closely at your list of Armeggeddon examples. Setting aside the absurd, which you apparently needed to fill a post, the difference here is simple arithmetic. Not politics. Not empathy. Dave has done an admirable job of pointing out the absurdity of current discourse. The numbers just dont work. Hence my comment about the bond market. (and imagine Helicopter Ben wasnt around!!!) Even Democrats seem to have ceded the unadvisory effects of the tax argument. Witness the last three months.
So now its debt capacity. With all due respect, Michael, if you had blood running out of your personal cylindrical unit I wouldn’t advocate baloney arguments about crying wolf, I would implore you to go see a doctor to stave off the worst effects of your looming prostate cancer. We have arrived, and comic book “what, me worry? arguments have run their course. Its time to get serious, not be clownish.
Drew:
Speaking of clownish:
That’s you at OTB commenting on Boehner’s screwing of NY and NJ on Sandy relief. You have the same credibility as your avatar, Mr. Romney. None at all.
Incidentally, “Fatboy” will be re-elected easily.
“Dave has done an admirable job of pointing out the absurdity of current discourse.”
Dave, like many of us, is hoping for a conclusive deal. In that light, this sucks. In terms of what is possible, and as one step of many, it is ok. If it were up to me, they would be concentrating on Medicare non-stop. Given that the GOP ran against Medicare cuts in 2010 and 2012, how do you initiate that conversation?
Steve
Micheal
I see you chose to not deal with econiomics. Good move on your part. Not your best suit.
As for Christie, what a clown. All he is saying is “give me my money.” He would have been better to say “I know a titanic legislastive struggle was just had, but I want mine. Boo-hoo.” Or, “I know money is scarce, but could we not spend it on the crappola we spend it on, but give it to me for a legitimate government purpose?” The latter would have been an adult reponse. Not his adolescent rant.
Yours is always that of the left………..just spend. No controls.
As for the politics. Note I said in my comment this is why I hate big government. But you conveniently (heh, no doubt intentionally) forgot to mention that in your misleading comment, you wholly and completely dishonest fuck stick. Fortunately, I’m used to it; for you really have nothing else to offer. .
Governor Christie is trying to help the people of his state. Real people, who survived a real hurricane. That’s not “leftism.” It’s not wasting money. That’s why we have a government.
The only part of your comment I failed to cut and paste was: “Lets get real, OK?” I don’t see that it changes anything.
I realize you’re upset. Not enough cuts in this deal? I actually agree. But I wonder what it is you think should have been cut. Here’s Mitt Romney’s list: PBS. That’s the whole list. Would you feel better if we had cut some money for PBS? Would that change everything?
What else do you think Mr. Romney would have cut? Because he never told us. And the House GOP never told us what they’d cut. Do you know why? Because they know perfectly well that aside from foreign aid, PBS and the always elusive Waste, Fraud and Abuse, the American people — left and right — don’t want to cut shit.
The American people — left and right — want big government. They want big government. They want SS and Medicare and veteran’s benefits and astronomical defense spending. They want poor children to get medical treatment and food. They want safe food and water. They want New Jersey to get disaster relief. That’s the whole ball of wax. They want just about everything they’re getting.
So spare us the left/right bullshit. When your candidate and your party don’t have the balls to name any cuts, the jig is up.
It’s simply amazing how the left and MSM were tenaciously after Romney/Ryan, pinning them down about absolute ‘details,’ regarding ideas, policies, prognostications, and dissecting their opinions, usually in a negative fashion. It seemed to me they treated Romney more intensely, giving him more scrutiny, like he was the one who should be defending/explaining his actions in a first presidential term, rather than the real president was being tasked to do.
However, when it came to their own candidate’s record, future ideas for a 2nd term, etc., there was a vacuum of incurious, soft-ball, laid-back interviews. The only concrete detail he laid down, again and again, was to tax the rich. In fact questions lobbed Obama’s way were more like verbal back rubs, squeezing his ego, lacking substance and, God forbid, without a sliver of criticism or doubt about how he was running the country. And, when he was asked one question dealing with stats, from David Letterman (size of the debt), he was able to bluff his way through it without a discerning eyebrow being raised.
Jan:
Mr. Obama said on probably a thousand occasions that he would raise taxes on people making over 250k. Did you miss all that? And of course he said he’d push the DREAM act, get us out of Afghanistan, support gay rights and women’s rights, blah blah blah.
Not a whole lot of detail, but you miss the fact that he’s the incumbent. It’s up to the challenger to describe how he’d change things. Mr. Romney was the guy saying he could do a better job.
Of course your dishonest, entitled little daddy’s boy didn’t think he needed to lay out an agenda, he thought he’d be handed the presidency like he was handed everything else in his charmed life. He thought he could pull a Drew and announce that he was Captain Business and be worshipped. And he fell just a wee bit short and ended up getting a wonderfully appropriate 47%.
The howls of wounded outrage from The Lone Grifter (astride his charger, Carried Interest) and his female sidekick Tonto are some of the more pleasing results of the election.
“It’s simply amazing how the left and MSM were tenaciously after Romney/Ryan, pinning them down about absolute ‘details,’ regarding ideas, policies, prognostications, and dissecting their opinions, usually in a negative fashion. ”
And they failed. I read the Romney website and no details were offered. When you claim you will cut tax rates by 20%, increase defense spending and balance the budget, dont you think some details should be offered? To do what he promised would require huge changes in our budgets. It would have been nice to know how he intended to accomplish it.
For his part, Obama did not make such outlandish promises. He has submitted budgets, so you have very detailed ideas about what he wanted to do. You know he supports the cost cutting in the ACA as a start to cutting Medicare. Since we need more work on health care reform and cutting Medicare, I would have liked more detail from him on that.
Steve
Mr. Obama said on probably a thousand occasions that he would raise taxes on people making over 250k. Did you miss all that? And of course he said he’d push the DREAM act, get us out of Afghanistan, support gay rights and women’s rights, blah blah blah.
Michael,
I already said the only concrete detail Obama gave on what he wanted to do was to ‘tax the rich.’ His definition of ‘rich’ are couples making over $250,000. The DREAM Act push was a one-sided politically motivated sweep around Congress, as was his alteration of Welfare Reform. Then there was his evolution of gay marriage and ramping up The War on Women, presented in the convoluted form of going after religious doctrine and forcing their hand on contraceptives.
As I see it Obama is not practicing leadership but rather arm-wrestling. He stays aloof in his ivory tower, called the Oval Office, uses the bully pulpit, in the form of a fawning MSM and Hollywood celebrities, pushing his agenda though unilaterally. Important bills, effecting everyone, are submitted without enough time for Congress to even read them. Budgets aren’t passed, just held back by Reid.
Maybe this is the new ‘norm’ in DC. However, I see such practices more as tyranny of the left than trying to achieve a workable consensus for all.
Yeah boy, he stood behind all those crackers with a gun at the ready just forcing them to call non-virginal contraceptive-using women libidinous sluts.
Honestly Girl, they one of the least artful bunches I evah seen.
They gonna be as long as Linebarger living that BS down with me.
Gimme me one reason I should pay attention to those sexist nitwits.
Gary Johnson may not be much, but he does offer at least a little respect with his tax breaks.
Stimulus or not, the Repubs ain’t crossin’ my threshold.
Annie, get your gun.
“Uh. I misspoke.” Sure as shootin’, sumbitch.
Jan, sweetie, you were in the protective arms of the man you loved while I was backhand-slapping sexist managers at newspapers. Didn’t get fired either. I was justified.
I won’t have those inept bastards talking down to me.
“Nevah!”