Ironically, we in The US incarcerate a higher percentage of our population than the so-called socialist countries in Europe. Those who think that national health care is just a hair’s breath away from a gulag system really need to rethink their logic.
To most people, an oligopoly of power by the moneyed classes is little freer than a monopoly of power by the communist party: they dont have much either way (the one major difference is in things likeT political speech and freedom of conscience). The argument that faster GDP growth under capitalist rules is better than slower growth under other rules because that would make everyone better off if that growth were more evenly distributed does not hold water if that growth is never, in fact, actually more evenly distributed.
I’ll agree that that’s the idea, but doesn’t really seem to work that way on the whole. Sure, some kids in that situation grow up to be productive members of society, but it sure looks like a lot, if not most, don’t. Instead, they continue to live off the government and have kids of their own that live off the government. I’m all for lending a helping hand, but the person has to be trying to help themselves too.
Bravo! I’m more about teaching a man to fish versus giving a man a fish. All things considered, I do volunteer my time and donate my money to causes I feel strongly about. Doing so in the form of tax just doesn’t gel with me. I’m actually going to help serve dinner at a soup kitchen in Harlem tomorrow night. Helping provide people get meal they may have not received just warms my heart. I’m all about social justice and taking care of the poor, I just feel doing so in the current model is broken.
I grew up in poverty and learned to work hard and pull myself out. I do know far too many of my peers blamed ‘the man’ and society for keeping them down while continuing to collect the check without applying themselves in anything they did. The scary thing is many did not see anything wrong with that.
Small stipend for doing nothing > Working hard to be self sufficient in many impoverished areas.
So let me get this straight. We have been paying single moms to have kids, and yet we do have a high rate of incarceration. Would I then be too far off in saying that the policy has already failed?
No wait, we need to throw more of my money at it. Because that will surely solve it this time. Just like QE3 stimulated the economy because QE1 and QE2 were too small.
If the socialist states had higher incarceration rates than the US, and US states with greater benefits had higher incarceration rates than US states with fewer benefits, then you would be able to say that the policy has failed. As it stands, the evidence suggests that areas with greater social supports and nets tend to have lower incarceration rates.
There are many variables to consider here, so this kind of argument is by no means water-tight, but the sum of the data doesn’t point in the direction you want it to. The socialist countries of Europe have lower incarceration rates, but also higher benefits. It’s also true that being a hard-ass on benefits seems to correllate on being a hard-ass on crimes, so it may be that places that have benefits are less interested in jailing people.
I do think that tying benefits to responsibilities is a good idea, and that CFAvsMBA does have a point when he complains that people are not sufficiently appreciative of some benefit policies. The tax credit system, however, is not always so obvious where your benefits are coming from because there are so many different line items mixing in non-linear ways, so I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to complain that people are insufficiently grateful for their tax credits.
^ this. The explosion in prison populations in the US correlates very strongly with the introduction of three-strikes laws, mandatory sentencing, and the war on drugs. The level of violent crimes in the US has been pretty constant over the past 20 years or so regardless of the health of the economy.
We have 2 single moms for secretaries at my office, and I think both of them have higher take home pay after taxes than I do. They add zero value to the office.
Both of these women NEVER take responcibility for anything and have the biggest senses of entitlement of anyone I’ve ever known in my life. They’re the ones who didn’t finish school, they’re the ones who let some loser of a man knock them up, they’re the ones who never work more than about 25 hours per week, but their crappy life is always someone else’s fault.
Not surprisingly, they continue to date the scourge of society and wonder why their kids are always in trouble. In fact I would bet that their sons are headed towards prison, and their daughters are headed towards teen pregnancy. So I’m not sure giving them a reward for having illegitimate children is some sort of progressive safety net that is adding value to society. Oh please.
I used to work in low-income housing… that industry is just proof that most government subsidy is nothing more than a black hole that allows people to keep living in atrophy. I’ve witnessed poor familes continue to have children for additional welfare benefits. These people would be better off with some limit to the amount of subsidy they can take, because allowing them to receive benefits just to get by removes any incentive to become a productive member of society. The vast majority of the recipients of housing subsidies, food stamps, etc just bitch and moan about how nothing is fair. They haven’t worked for a single thing that they have, but they still act entitled to more. Yet 95% of the occupied units I toured would have a huge flat screen TV and the parking lots would be full of shitty cars with expensive rims. Started to make me physically ill when I realized some of these people had a comparable stardard of living to some of my hard working peers.
The one exception to this rule: illegal immigrants. They had tremendous pride of ownership, wanted to give their familes a better life, and actually appreciated the opportunities that the US allows if one works hard. Pristine apartments, healthy family structures, never argued with other tennants etc. I wish I could say that about all of the poor but it seems to get worse the farther you get from the border.
That’s a very good point, logically. So in theory, throwing more of MY money at the problem could improve the situation.
Since it’s practically impossible to see where each one of your tax dollars goes, and since money is perfectly fungible, why not just observe the inputs and outputs? Black-box instead of white-box approach. The single moms are getting net money, so someone must be losing net money. In part it’s the Chinese buying our debt, in part it’s my children whom the Fed is burdening with debt, and in part it’s me who is paying (heavily) into the system. So I’d like a letter of thanks from all the single moms on welfare (and why single them out, from everybody on welfare); and so would the Chinese and my kids. It would be nice to appreciated instead of being told “pay us or we will commit more crimes”.
Taxes are a matter of degrees. Personally I am OK with about 25% all taxes combined. I would venture that most of you would be OK with 0 to 40% and no one would want the government to take in more than 50%. Well, in California it breaks down as, for a married taxpayer with an adjusted (after all deductions) income of $100,000 the MARGINAL tax rates are:
25% Federal income tax
9.3% State of California income tax
8.25% State of California sales tax (7.75%) + Country of Los Angeles sales tax (0.5%)
8.84% State of California corporate tax
Total you get to keep: (1-0.25)(1-0.093)(1-0.0825)(1-0.0884) = 56.89 cents per dollar. So your marginal cost of government is 43+ %.
Even more if you work for a bank. (State of California corporate rate is 10.84% for them.) I am counting the corporate rate because it shows up somewhere - either in higher prices to you as consumers or lower salaries to you as employees. Corporations are people too (to echo Flip) and what they pay comes out of somebody’s pocket.
And I am not even counting 7.65% normal / 15.3% self-employed Social Security tax since in theory you will get it all back (mwahahahahah), and the 1.45 % / 2.9% Medicare tax and I don’t even know what % State of California SDI SUI whatever other taxes.
And my 1.25% property tax on the entire property value (not income mind you, but the principal) ALSO has to come out of those paltry 57 cents or whatever is left of them at this point.
So guess what, when I said leeches, that was not a figure of speech. The government is literally snatching food out of my mouth.
If you go with effective instead of marginal, the calculation is still (surprizingly) simple, the only thing as far as I can see that changes is the total Federal tax rate. Calfornia taxes are flat for a very large range of incomes (9.3% above $45K or something for single, and $55K for married IIRC.)
EDIT: I am not too sure about how to allocate the corporate taxes, and maybe should include 12% EFFECTIVE Federal rate in them. Also, assume my house costs 4 times the annual salary, so the property tax rate is about 5% of income. Then marginal money I keep is 0.5689 * (1-0.12)(1-0.05) = 47.65 cents per dollar.
If we ignore corporate taxes then I get to keep 47.65/(1-0.12)/(1-0.0884) = 59.28 cents per dollar. So, not counting corporate taxes the government is still getting 40 cents off of every dollar that my wife and I make above $100K. Hard to guess below $100K, but I’d say at least 25 cents.
So I met this chubby blonde at the bar last weekend. We went out again on Tuesday for drinks and other activities. Today we’re texting and I find out that she has a 5 year old daughter starting school next week…
I don’t think you need to worry about being taken advantage of. If things worked out she would lose her head of household status and all the riches that come with it.
For all you know the dad could have died or something. This stigma around single moms is pretty sad. Folks just trying to make the best of the situation and get their kid a decent start. I’m sure many take advantage of the benefits, but not all. And I don’t blame folks for pushing the boundaries of ethical behaviour when doing so to better the life of their children. I don’t care for helping folks out with the consequences of actions they take, but support for single moms is less about the mom and more about ensuring that their kid(s) get a solid start from an already disadvantaged situation. The kid didn’t ask to be in that spot. They deserve a hand up to a more level playing field.
You didn’t actually *say* it, but that’s the way it feels, especially given your prior rants about single moms.
And I wonder about this term “no ambition”. Does that mean that all he did was sit around playing video games all day every day? Or was his $500k per year job not enough to support all of her bad habits?
He sits on his ass, she works her hands to the bone to give him money every payday.