Why are we a divided Nation?

The chart establishes that Social Security is expected to remain a stable fraction of the GDP. Medicare and interest on the debt are the problems.

Medicare is the problem--that and interest on the debt.

The Feds use the SS tax revenue to pay out benefits and anything left over from the revenue on other items. When the benefit payments exceed the taxes, money will have to come from general revenue. The SS "fund" is an irrelevant accounting convention.

 

No substance, as usual.

 

I wonder why you're such an irritable person.

The fact that people don't agree with you one hundred percent of time bothers you?

I refer to that is a first world problem.

 

Yes, you did. See above.

An example of how you conduct yourself on the forum.

 

using the interest rates of the two time periods, a typical mortgage payment in 1999 came to about $1450. It would be about $1650 now. That’s totally in line with the change in income.

housing prices have gone up because of the low interest rates. It’s almost a perfectly inverse relationship using historical data.

 

The "chart" doesn't establish anything. As I already pointed out, it's **** right from the get-go because it's wrong on the size of the budget compared to the GDP. It's also 12 years out of date already. Medicare and interest on the debt are indeed problems, but they don't neutralize the problem of the unfunded Social Security program. And saying that the Congress can "just" take money out of the general fund just goes to prove that Social Security is a runaway Ponzi scheme in its final stages.

 

No I didn't say you appeal things to the Supreme Court.

 

You're going to pay even if people do save. Ever hear of inflation?

Most conservative pols ( and conservatives) would find clouds of buzzards over our major cities attracted by the piles of corpses from starved old people to be a "worthy lesson to the indolent"

 

It's much more than the conservatives WANT to do. Conservatives pine to turn our major cities into a modern version of 1840's London, where people indeed DID starve in the streets.

 

And I bet you don't think you have a bigoted bone in your body.

 

Only a bigot describes all people in a group as bad people...kinda like your president .he sure knows his base

 

That is an astonishing statement coming from the same person who blithely finishes a statement like you just did.

 

Thats a great question. Do you think SS is the best we can do for our workers?

 

You are incorrect. Healthcare is free; illness is what is expensive. I take good care of my health through diet and activity. Once the ACA took effect, my "insurance" was no longer available and I do not qualify for any subsidies. For my family of 6, my healthcare plan cost more than the average American family makes in a year.

You are ignoring the real problem that is the record level of illness that has produces record profits for the pharm industry. One thing we can agree on is that government is the problem. More government is not the solution.

I know you have good intentions with Medicare for all, but the results speak for themselves. Americans are fatter and sicker than ever in spite of record spending on health care.

 

Perceived unfairness always upsets primates, certainly. It's a big part of how social animals are wired.

 

Thats why it should be an option for those who choose. I am confused by your statement about me not doing a good job of budgeting. How would my budgeting prevent paying into SS? If I don't pay my taxes, they take my home, my business, my investment property, and my retirement.

 

Interesting statement considering its a thread on why we are divided. Would you like to discuss the results of a dem super majority in California? I live in the Dems petry dish, Los Angeles. Can we discuss people starving in the streets? Just yesterday, I was filling my tank and a man came up to me saying that he hasn't eaten all day and asked if I could spare some change.

 

I've seen economic arguments for both sides on the issue of immigrants and wages. Some authors like Borjas at Harvard found that immigration did indeed drive down wages but only for the very lowest earners -high school students and people just entering the economy. Other studies such as one recently published in the Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine found that immigration had virtually no effect on wages and other research has shown that immigration actually stimulates the economy:

"Empirical research in recent decades has produced findings that by and large remain consistent with those in The New Americans. When measured over a period of more than 10 years, the impact of immigration on the wages of natives overall is very small. However, estimates for subgroups span a comparatively wider range, indicating a revised and somewhat more detailed understanding of the wage impact of immigration since the 1990s. To the extent that negative wage effects are found, prior immigrants—who are often the closest substitutes for new immigrants—are most likely to experience them, followed by native-born high school dropouts, who share job qualifications similar to the large share of low-skilled workers among immigrants to the United States. Empirical findings about inflows of skilled immigrants, discussed shortly, suggest the possibility of positive wage effects for some subgroups of workers, as well as at the aggregate level.

The literature on employment impacts finds little evidence that immigration significantly affects the overall employment levels of native-born workers. However, recent research finds that immigration reduces the number of hours worked by native teens (but not their employment rate). Moreover, as with wage impacts, there is some evidence that recent immigrants
reduce the employment rate of prior immigrants—again suggesting a higher degree of substitutability between new and prior immigrants than between new immigrants and natives."

Suggested Citation:"Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23550.



Here is a relative comparison of two studies on by Borjas et al as mentioned above. So there is really little conclusive evidence either way but Ottaviano et al shows little or even a positive effect.

I would argue that wages have been stagnant since the 80's when Reagan took office and that this is largely a result of decades of right-wing attacks on the labour movement which have basically destroyed collective bargaining along with the threat of moving production to other jurisdictions where labour and environmental regulations are next to non-existent.

Immigration is a being used as a deflection to further justify failed taxation and regulatory policies that no longer work for average Americans. So much easier to blame a powerless minority than to examine your own disastrous record on wages.

 

But it is mostly a few families that are taking home all that wealth. And while some of it is earned, over 60% of wealth is now inherited - a fact that is only going to get worse as the population ages. The truth is, while there are a few genuine entrepreneurs that are true success stories, most of the extreme wealth is inherited from estates or exploited by rewarding those at the top with obscene salaries and suppressing wages at the bottom. And this was quite by design. Have you ever read the Powell Memorandum?:

But there is an onus for those who are benefiting most from living in a stable, functioning democracy to pay their fair share for the benefits of living in that democracy. Mostly because of regressive tax policy, the burden of paying for things like infrastructure, social services and other services that benefit the whole is falling more and more to the middle class through things like payroll and consumption taxes while those at the top are paying less and less - as Buffet said, he pays less tax than his secretary. This state is hardly sustainable nor are the levels of inequality healthy for a modern-nation state. In fact, these are the things that make a nation collapse as it did in France and Rome.

You have to decide what kind of society you want to live in - one with gross levels of inequality and seething discontent or a stable, fair equitable democracy where people contribute to their level of ability.

Worker productivity has risen steadily over the same time period that wages have been stagnant or even fallen. You should know this:

So you are trying to claim it was because of the tax rate that there were so few billionaires in the 50's as to now? So they just collectively decided not to make any more money because of the marginal tax rate. This at a time of the most extensive economic boom possibly in human history - at time when the US economy was expanding as never before and there were all kinds of opportunities to create wealth in rebuilding Europe and Japan?

Can you show any data to prove that people decided not to make money because the marginal tax rate was so high? Here is real GDP growth from the Commerce Dept. over that time period. So despite all that economic growth, people just didn't want to be billionaires? Or could it be that in real terms the 1% has managed to capture so much of the wealth from economic activity and the productivity of American workers that the rise in wealth at the top has been near exponential?

Clearly.

 

why? Trump is the one who described his base!

 

There's a lot less upward mobility in our country than in many industrialized societies. The top 1% tend to stay the top 1%.

I disagree. When an elite amass wealth, then make most of the important business decisions that impact society, we end up with what's good for plutocrats.

A rather rosy view of business. In fact, there's a lot of predatory behavior in business we should be disincentivizing.

I disagree. If we allow someone to immigrate to this country, we should provide help they need.

More Americans finish education and training at every level, from high school to doctorates. Unemployment is very low.

I'm sorry, but this isn't a narrative you'd get from an economist.

Raising taxes would be "taking people's money at confiscatory rates?"

Canada manages.

 

That's what been happening for the past 50 years and is why there is little emigration today.

Today's immigrants no longer have to assimilate and they keep getting free stuff paid for by the native born citizens who have had enough of having to push one for English.

Before 1965, 1/3 of all immigrants who couldn't assimilate or needed free stuff to make it in America got back on the boat and returned to Europe.

Why don't the PC revisionist never mention that ?

Another factor why there are so many immigrants demanding free stuff and America is experiencing overpopulation especially in California is a reduced rate of emigration — that is, more of today's newcomers stay for their whole lives, rather than returning to the old country after a few years.

 

What prejudicial statements ..that immigrants just want free stuff. Immigrants come here the same reason your ancestors came here ,for a better life for their children. Immigrants work their asses off but it makes it easier to be a bigot by making these generalizations. Have you no heart? Have you no soul? I hope you don’t call yourself a Christian.

 

The study isn't necessary, it's a simple matter of economics. More supply = lower price. Lower demand = lower price. It's a bit of a subterfuge to say that new immigrants are keeping more previous immigrants out of jobs or their wages low rather than natives because both count toward the wage rate. And as long as the upper level incomes keep going up while the immigrant incomes remain at dirt level, the income differential will keep getting larger.

As for your Reagan claim, your own chart shows the split happened back in the 1960s, 15 years before Reagan even took office. And we've had Bush, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama since then, and wages haven't budged under any of them. Why? Because we haven't done anything to bring immigration under control. Reduce the supply of cheap labor and wages will go up. That's Econ 101 right there.

 

Citation needed. Where do you get the figure of 60% of wealth being inherited? Even the left-wing Brookings Institute says that number is no more than 35-45%.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/soci...01/30/wealth-inheritance-and-social-mobility/

From Forbes: "Recently, PNC Wealth Management conducted a survey of people with more than $500,000 free to invest as they like, a fair definition of “wealthy,” and possibly “millionaire” once you begin including home equity and other assets. Only 6% of those surveyed earned their money from inheritance alone. 69% earned their wealth mostly by trading time and effort for money, or by “working.”"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/moneyb...ividuals-earned-not-inherited-their-wealth-2/

(The remaining 25% would be those who both inherited and worked.)

Yeah, I don't get this, "You owe us," business. Why? What does anyone who had the luck to be born in this country owe it? On what basis do you make such a claim? I can see if you wanted to say a rich immigrant owed it to the country to give some money to it, but even then, because we're a capitalist society, even a rich immigrant didn't get rich by taking, he got rich by contributing. Rich people owe us nothing.

Income taxes are strictly progressive, so the regressive tax policy is only in certain areas, such as Social Security taxes, which fall heaviest on the lowest paid, and sales taxes, which fall heaviest on the lower middle class, who buy the most "stuff". But you can fix those without making income taxes punitive.

Thank you, Karl Marx. **** off.

Immigration.

Absolutely. Why bother earning any more than you are if you're only going to keep 10% of it? No point in doing that.

No. But I can show you how the number of millionaires and billionaires skyrocketed starting in the 1980s, thanks to the reduction in top rates. Good enough, no?

Rich people don't take anything from me, so I have no reason to care how much money they accumulate. They aren't hurting me, and they aren't hurting you.