Posted on 05/01/2009 5:44:19 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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So far, Obama's only proposal for dealing with the funding shortage [caused by Social Security, Medicare, and his new spending] is a tax increase on high earners, leaving "95% of working families" untouched. But the math doesn't work. In 2006, the latest year for which data are available, the top 5% of families took home a whopping 36% of national taxable income, and paid 20% of that, or around $600 billion, in Federal income tax. But even before the president's ambitious health care plan emerges from the Congressional policy grinder, the CBO estimates that his budget plans to spend an additional $400 billion each year. He's not going to get there with a small, or even a large, tax increase on high earners. For one thing, the share of national income collected by the top 5% has undoubtedly dropped sharply since 2006, because their incomes tend to depend more on capital and business income, and on bonuses, all of which have fallen off. (That's why tax revenues fell off so steeply in 2001.) And work by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez suggests that the deeper the crisis, the longer and deeper the hit to top incomes: the lessening of the gap between rich and poor during the fifties and sixties may in fact have been largely attributable to the deleterious effects of the Great Depression and World War II.
Even if this weren't the case, it's not really feasible to pay for everything simply by doubling taxes on the wealthy -- because federal income taxes aren't the only taxes they pay. Higher incomes are disproportionately concentrated in places with high state and local taxes, like New York City.
(Excerpt) Read more at politics.theatlantic.com ...
Ummmmmmm -- do you think they care?
A reasonably intelligent 5th grader could tell 0bama’s numbers don’t add up on any of his initiatives. Yet the media give him a pass.
I remember during one the debates, he addressed funding higher education, stating (I’m paraphrasing): “We need to raise the salaries for educators, and bring down the cost of attending college.”
Huh? How do you do both?
Same thing with taxes & spending, social security payouts and collections, the list is endless. Promises promises...that will bankrupt the country and destroy our economy.
And the sheeple approve; I guess the show proved we are not smarter than 5th graders.
Definition of reckless: marked by unthinking boldness or with defiant disregard for danger or consequences
This is a classic definition of a Ponzi Scheme where the Gov’t is paying current benefits with the proceeds from new contributors or new lenders. A house of cards that will eventually fall when the Lenders back away from the table.
Math? Liberals don’t need no stinkin’ math. They wouldn’t understand a differential equation if it hit ‘em in the head, and anything past HS algebra would blow the Obamaloon brain (both cells of it).
But the math doesn’t work.
Ummmmmmm — do you think they care?
It’s a matter of definition of “government fix’:
When you think “fix” you are thinking of “repair, restore to working condition”.
When the government thinks of “fix” they are thinking in terms of a drug “fix” where you are temporarily satisfied, but will need more ($$) soon. And to get your “fix” you usually steal from others.
http://www.gawkk.com/a-powerful-visualization-of-the-100-million-obama-budget-cuts/discuss
Amusing video commentary about the $100M cut.
I remember during one the debates, he addressed funding higher education, stating (I’m paraphrasing): “We need to raise the salaries for educators, and bring down the cost of attending college.”
I also oppose “college for everyone”. From an academic quaity standpoint, this would be a disaster. We already have lots of people in college who don’t belong there. Getting in more people would just make it four more years of HS.
Over the next decade or so, 70 trillion in unfunded Federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, government pensions, etc.) will come due (not to mention the states and municipalities). There is no way that amount of money can be taxed from the economy. There is also no way to borrow that much money. Therefore, there are only two solutions; renig on promised payments (political suicide), or inflate the money. The Fed has already started doing the latter, by “retiring” several trillion in debt with fiat new money in the last year. Nobody knows exactly how much they and the media isn’t talking about it. But look for it to continue. At some point they will do what Mexico did in the 80s, issue a “new dollar” in exchange for every 100 “old dollars”, and restabalize the currency. People holding cash, bonds, etc. will be screwed, but people with good stocks and tangable assets will be ok.
All of what you say is true. There are layers of administrative fat in every public body, especially education. But do you really think 0bama’s regime would do any of those things? Government in general just doesn’t work that way.
Indianapolis Public Schools are faced with budget shortfalls, so they are talking about cutting staff. There is much public handwringing and angst over the cuts, but since enrollment is declining it would normally make sense to cut staff since service demand is down. But that’s a business model, not a government one. Anyway I digress. The staff cuts are all teachers, while administrators will be “reshuffled.” That’s the way government works, and why 0bama’s numbers don’t add up.
Obama’s focus on “creating jobs” would in fact have the opposite effect. It would create administrative jobs which serve only to monitor and document other jobs. Jobs which don’t teach, don’t produce, but only provide a paycheck for someone formerly unemployed. Jobs which smile in front of cameras and sign documents. I would expect that the admin/teacher ration will go up under ObamaEd.
They better learn to care soon. The laws of reality won’t let them get away with it forever.
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