I can see why they are thinking about exiting the Eurozone

higgmond · February 23, 2012, 9:50pm

bchadwick:

Why is that so f’ed up? It doesn’t really matter whether the giver or the reciever pays the tax to the giver or the receiver. The giver gives less if they are taxed. The receiver recieves less if they are taxed. In the end, it really doesn’t matter who pays the tax.

The only difference is that the tax is collected at the giver’s marginal tax rate. If givers are higher earners than recievers (a logical assumption), the tax will be higher. The IRS tends to find it easier to track the giver than the reciever.

But, you can give up to $1MM tax free over a lifetime to any individual, so if you go over the $12,000 exempt gift tax, you can still give up to $1MM to someone before you are taxed (so families can give more than $12,000).

When times were hard, I learned about these rules because I was concerned about gift taxes from a family member.

It’s f’ed up because you shouldn’t have to pay for the right to give away your own money.

itera · February 23, 2012, 10:26pm

^ agreed. but that is how it works.

And after seeing someone on welfare buy an iphone, and some guy use government handouts to buy pricey cuts of steak, clearly that’s what must be happening

ohai · February 23, 2012, 11:18pm

Some single mom on welfare wanted to buy my iPad on Craigslist. She was waiting for her next check so she could make the payment.

Not that we should generalize based on individual examples.

guestuser · February 23, 2012, 11:36pm

Dunno, I have heard many examples like this. I was a 2005 grad and personally know many people with college degrees who are too lazy to get a job right now and would rather watch TV and smoke pot for 99 weeks. It’s ridiculous.

I support the idea of a social safety net, but we should tweak the application of the principle. There are a ton of people right now that are on welfare and unemployment. Why can’t some of those people pick up grabage along the road, work in soup kitchens, etc. (whatever low skilled jobs need to be done) so that society benefits from the cost these people incur? Why can’t we put some of the unemployed to work cleaning up the gulf region, for example? Why not rebuilding sections of New Orleans? 3 hots and a cot and you get your unemployment check. Obviously, relocation opportunities would be optional, but I guarantee some people would do that.

It doesn’t need to be draconian, but we should get some kind of return – and I bet you would see a lot of people on the dole figure out how to get off of it if they actually had to do some crappy jobs for low pay.

itera · February 24, 2012, 1:42am

^ I agree that people taking handouts should be doing something useful for society. Maybe we should get a whole bunch of energy producing bicycle machines and make the people taking handouts to generate energy. No brain required there.

Or clean toilets in the government buildings or something if they’re too fat or lazy to do the energy producing thing

bchad · February 24, 2012, 5:44am

I am all for a social safety net, and I think the longer you stay on it, the more responsibilities the government should place on you, but I do think that the restrictions should build gradually. In the beginning, it may be that you just need some income replacement for a little while while you search for something in your field, but if that doesn’t work after a while, you need to retrain for something else, and if that doesn’t work, thne you may need to build national parks or something like that.