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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
Funny then that they do in fact add to the deficit. Duh. Really? So then you can easily demonstrate that "fact"! Do so! Demonstrate the fact of what you are asserting! Of course, we all know that you will not. You never do. You never have and you never will. All you ever do is make blatant and obvious false assertions contrary to reality and then try to suck everybody down into your Black Hole of Shtupidity. Remember: the deficit is not the same thing as the National Debt!
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
An unqualified PR flack on the radio says SS contributes to the deficit.
QED.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
Faith writes:
I've never heard them called mandatories, only entitlements. The payroll deduction for Social Security is mandatory - maybe that's what you're thinking of. Yes I know they are called entitlements, that's what I was calling them until I encountered people like the Heritage Foundation official calling them mandatory. Apparently both words are used. First Faith was challenged repeatedly by the concept of plurals in the English language, then by the fact that the federal deficit and the National Debt are two very different things, and now she is being challenged by the fact that most things have more than one property (eg, ice is both cold and slippery). Social Security and Medicare are entitlements. We paid into them for decades (over four decades in my own case) so we are entitled to the promised benefits. Same thing for any life insurance (or auto or homeowners insurance), in which you have paid your premiums so you are entitled to the benefits of that coverage. Instead, the Wrong (how could anyone possibly call them "right"?) has shifted the meaning to "freebies", that we are lazy bums who "feel entitled" to get something for nothing. As noted above, we paid into the program which entitles us to the benefits. At the same time, those payments are mandatory and make up the part of the Federal Budget called "Mandatory Spending" in contrast to "Discretionary Spending". From that Wikipedia link:
quote: I read "funded by more permanent Congressional appropriations" as referring to Social Security and Medicare Part A funding coming from specific payroll taxes that go into specific trust funds (Medicare B is funded by participants' monthly insurance premiums while Parts C and D are private insurance). The primary source of the deficit is in the discrepancy between revenues and outlays under "Discretionary Spending", with some of the other mandatory spending (eg, Congressional salaries and pensions) also contributing to the deficit. So then if Congress were truly committed to cutting mandatory spending that would actually affect the deficit, then they should vote to eliminate salaries for congressmen and senators. That would certainly contribute much more to reducing the deficit than cuts to Social Security or Medicare ever could.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7
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An unqualified PR flack on the radio says SS contributes to the deficit. QED. And as you yourself pointed out in Message 4828 about Faith's source, Justin Bogie (my emphasis added):
JonF writes: quote: Now, I remember Paul Ryan as being one of the most vocal proponents of destroying Social Security and Medicare. Why should we be surprised that Justin Bogie would be carrying on his old boss' misconceived crusade?
quote: Paul Ryan is famously obsessed with Ayn Rand and required his staffers to read one of her novels (I forget which one). Ayn Rand in turn idolized William Edward Hickman, a psychopath who in late 1927 kidnapped and murdered Marion Parker, the 12-year-old daughter of a Los Angeles banker. For the ransom payment, he had dismembered her body leaving only her torso and head with eyes propped open so that it would look to her father that she was still alive. After first evading capture, he was finally arrested, tried and executed on the gallows about a year after the kidnapping. Ayn Rand idolized him and planned a novel in which the protagonist, a Nietschian "superman", was patterned after Hickman. So she is the source of inspiration for "libertarians" and "conservatives"? No wonder so many of their ideas and positions seem so evil. And ironically she ended up on Social Security and Medicare.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7
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Everything we spend money on contributes to the deficit which then contributes to the National Debt. We've been through all this before and you still have no clue how it works?
... he studies this stuff and I don't, .. Then get off your lazy ass and start studying! Sheesh! What's wrong with you? If you were to study then you would be able to understand what Bogie's talking about and be able to tell if it actually rings true and, if he is indeed lying (which we don't doubt) then you won't be deceived by him. But as long as you refuse to even try to learn anything, you will continue to be easy prey for him and his ilk. Here's a practical example of your folly. Back in 2002 I received a cold email from a young creationist with a creationist claim he had just been told in youth camp:
quote:No scientist would tell us such a thing, because that claim is complete and utter nonsense. The actual facts are that half the sun's mass is concentrated at the core which occupies 1.5% of its volume and it is in the core that the sun is losing mass through fusion. Some creationist at some point saw or heard that half the sun's mass is involved in mass loss through fusion and misunderstood what he was reading or hearing. He repeated that to some other creationist who misunderstood it even worse until that claim degraded to its final ludicrous form. And BTW, as the sun loses mass, its gravity decreases and the planets end up moving farther out, not closer in as per this claim. The object lesson here is that if anybody who had even the most basic understanding of the sun had heard that claim, he would have immediately recognized it for the complete trash that it is and he would not be fooled by it. But instead, abjectly ignrant creationists accepted it uncritically and repeated it to other abjectly ignrant creationists created a long chain of deceived fools. If you were to gain even the most basic understanding of anything that you pontificate about, then you would be able to tell what complete trash your sources are feeding you and be able to break their chain of deceived fools. Different pots of money being filled from different sources being used to pay for different things. Is that beyond your ability to comprehend? Yes, we are using the plural in English, but don't let that frighten you. So let's use an example of running a household budget based on how we used to do it with some additions. My wife and I both worked and made about the same amount and in addition I had a second income from the reserves. We did not co-mingle our money, but rather we both had our own checking and savings accounts -- I had two sets of accounts which I kept separate (and still do). That means that we had three pots of money to work with. Each pot of money had its own separate source of income and each pot of money was used to pay for very specific expenses:
OK, we have three pots of money: K, C, and T. If a deficit were to arise, where would it be? Any one of the three accounts, of the three pots of money, could develop a deficit. And that deficit would be independent of the other accounts. If one account were to develop a deficit, would cutting costs in the other accounts alleviate that deficit? No, of course not! Changing the spending in the other pots of money would have no effect on spending in the pot suffering from the deficit. The only thing that could possibly affect a pot's deficit would be to change the spending in that pot. It's really that simple and straightforward. How could anybody not be able to understand it? Social Security has its own pot of money, its trust fund which is dedicated to paying out SS benefits. That pot is fed by special payroll taxes which are labeled either "Social Security" or "FICA" (when combined with Medicare part A; I've seen both). Medicare has its own pot of money, its trust fund which is dedicated to paying out Medicare benefits. Medicare A is fed by special payroll taxes which are labeled either "Medicare" or "FICA" (when combined with Social Security; I've seen both). Medicare B is fed by monthly insurance premiums paid by recipients. Parts C and D are private medical insurance and so do not involve any government spending. What I am not sure of is whether Parts A and B use the same pot of money or have their own separate pots, but that has no effect on the federal deficit. What's left is a communal pot of money that is fed by all government revenues except for Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. Out of that communal pot of money come about half the mandatory spending and all of the discretionary spending. That is where the deficit comes from. And either Social Security nor Medicare have anything whatsoever to do with it, since they are paid for out of their own separate pots of money. Back in mid-November in Dominant Force in West Today According to Dennis Prager is Fear of Left I replied to JonF's reply to you, Message 98, with my own Message 100. JonF presented two pie graphs showing what percentages of the outlays went to what in 2018. In my reply, I pointed out that his graphs don't separate out which outlays came from which pots of money and even that there was no mention that there actually are separate pots of money. I took data from a graphic for the 2018 Federal Budget from Wikipedia's United States Federal Budget:
Then I broke all the figures down:
DWise1 writes: So we have mandatory spending and discretionary spending as you kind of broke out with your second graphic. From mine we have these groupings:
Outlays $4.1 trillion
But where are the revenues coming from that pay for that? This is the part the gets obscured:
Revenues $3.3 trillion
So any discussion of the deficit requires that we define specifically where the deficit comes from, namely what specific revenues and specific outlays go into calculating the deficit. That must be known in order to figure out which factors cause the deficit and therefore which factors could be adjusted to reduce or eliminate the deficit. Both Social Security and Medicare Part A (Parts B, C, & D are insurance programs, two of them private insurance, funded by premiums paid by recipients) are funded by payroll taxes levied specially for them and which cannot be used for any other purpose. As such, they cannot and do no play any part in the deficit. Since they are not factors contributing to the deficit, adjusting them would have no effect on the deficit. Also, these figures are for the 2018 Budget. We need to see the figures for the 2019 Budget, which I believe was the first one based on the GOP's tax scam and which greatly increased defense spending from $623 billion to something like $800 billion (as I recall). And when we crunch those numbers, we will need to keep straight where specific sources of revenue are going (eg, payroll taxes going to Social Security and to Medicare A). Also keep in mind that Fiscal Year 2019 ended a couple weeks ago and that we are currently in FY 2020 and hence under the 2020 Budget. We can also learn about how much federal spending is going where from economist and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich's video, "Where Your Tax Dollars Really Go":
I had prepared a list of the percentages he presents for discretionary spending, but haven't posted them on this forum yet ... until now:
discretionary spending 4% Foreign Aid - International 3% Science, Space, Technology 3% Natural Resources, Environment 3% Transportation 2% Community & Regional Development 5% Administration of Justice 5% Health, CDC, NIH 6% Income Security (including Food Stamps) 7% Education and Training 7% Veteran Benefits 1% All other, including energy, agriculture, and commerce That's only 46%. Remaining 54% goes to the military, most of which goes to contractors Faith, I do realize that this is casting pearls before swine yet again. At least others can learn something even if you are a lost cause.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1475 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I WILL NOT CALL HIM A LlAR AND SINCE YOU DO I WILL NOT READ YOUR POST.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7
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Then fuck you, you Black Hole of Sthupidity.
But what did I write?
If you were to study then you would be able to understand what Bogie's talking about and be able to tell if it actually rings true and, if he is indeed lying (which we don't doubt) then you won't be deceived by him. IF Your grasp of English is so abysmal that you have no comprehension of a conditional? If you do find that he is lying to you, then why wouldn't you call him a liar? That's yet another conditional that I just used. Because you're a fucking lying hypocrite yourself?
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
Faith writes: Trump is none of those things, runaway, out of control, none of it, that's all Leftist lying propaganda. You forgot to mention lawless, dishonest, retributive, intimidating, vindictive and tyranical. Empty denial looks so good on you, and the additional flourish of a gratuitous and erroneous insult was icing on the cake. Don't forget to deny that Republicans in Congress are enablers of all this. But most of my message was about hearsay, and Message 4647 contains a lengthy cut-n-paste of the actual Fiona Hill testimony, the testimony you keep mischaracterizing. Have you no interest in backing up your claims of hearsay with fact? Do you not care whether your accusations are true? It certainly appears that way. --Percy
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AdminPhat Inactive Member |
Are you drinking again, David? Let's try not to get personal with Faith. And there is no need to use profanity to make your points.
Edited by AdminPhat, : David,not Duane
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9203 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.4
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Would be nice if the mods would moderate Faith. How many lies, micharecterizations and attacks against "leftists" is she allowed before you have the balls to say something to her?
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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Percy Member Posts: 22506 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.4 |
I found those definitions very confusing. All we need to do for Faith is provide a clear, understandable and unambiguous definition of hearsay, and I don't think this does that.
Here's the whole thing from Rule 801. Definitions That Apply to This Article; Exclusions from Hearsay | Federal Rules of Evidence | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute. It appears to be defining not what constitutes hearsay but what doesn't. I think few non-lawyers could make sense of this. I certainly can't:
quote: If you were just trying to help me understand the formal legal definition of hearsay then thanks for trying, but this is beyond me. --Percy Edited by Percy, : Edit introductory paragraph to be more clear.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
I WILL NOT CALL HIM A LlAR AND SINCE YOU DO I WILL NOT READ YOUR POST.
Any excuse to avoid reality. What he said is false, proven over and over. Call it what you will, it remains false. It's apparent his field of expertise is appearing on TV and radio. Reading his biography on the Heritage Foundation site, it seems very unlikely he has studied retirement economics to any noticeable extent.
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JonF Member (Idle past 199 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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I have no difficulty understanding that. I am not a lawyer.
I think the most understandable definition is the first one I posted. There is no definition so simple that Faith will understand it.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7
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Are you drinking again, David? Cold sober for more than a week.
Let's try not to get personal with Faith. It's factual. Faith is a f*cking liar. Just now, she deliberately lied in order to fake an excuse to avoid the facts and reality yet again! She repeats the same sick and demented pattern over and over and over and f*cking over again. She spouts her liies. Everybody corrects her and she ignores them and just repeats her liies. When she does "engage", she does so by lying about what we tell her, citing sources who are lying, citing valid sources whom she then misrepresents and lies about, and/or by spouting a new set of liies. Then when she finally finds her position untenable, she concocts some lame excuse to fun away, including her eyesight (which just conveniently happens to go out at that point), somebody looked at her wrong so now she's too upset, she arbitrarily decides to ignore the facts because of some dreamed up offense, whatever other lie she can dream up as an excuse. Then later she comes back with the same old liies and starts the cycle all over again. And she does it all deliberately! She is a f*cking liar. She is a deliberate deceiver. She is a willing and willful accomplice to traitors to America. She is an abomination. And she is the very model of a creationist and a "true Christian."
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined:
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The truly rich (as opposed to high income people) have a huge variety of ways to mitigate their tax burden, so it seems unlikely that any change in the tax code would cause them to leave the country. Their tax attorneys would just find alternate avenues for lessening the tax burden. Plus the truly rich can live (establish their residence) anywhere in the world they want, since private jets can flit them about. They likely already have homes in many countries and "official" residence for tax purposes in a tax free country. That's why we need to revive corporate taxes and taxes on stocks and equities: if you make money in the US you pay US taxes on it.
JonF originally said "the rich and corporations," and Faith truncated it to just "the rich." Most people do not work for "the rich." They work for companies, some big, some small, some somewhere in the middle. Cutting taxes on the rich is not going to employ many more people. The rich can only buy so many cars and boats and jets and houses and fancy vacations, and they can only employ so many maids and butlers and pool boys. The money they save from lower taxes will mostly go into investments or trust funds for the kids and so on. Exactly. They also buy stocks in their companies to raise the stock values (an artificial value that isn't real until stocks are sold).
So many corporations used their tax bounty to increase bonuses, pay down debt, buy back stock, upgrade or replace aging equipment, etc. Most did not employ more workers. Exactly, whereas higher taxes mean they allocate more to lower their taxable value, and THAT creates jobs or increases payroll.
Another important point. At the end of the Obama administration the unemployment rate was already 4.7%, by historical standards already very low. Traditionally, anything below around 5% is considered full employment, plus or minus a percentage point or so. There is not much lower to go. But the full employment point is also considered the inflation threshold. This is not a hard and fast rule, of course. It just means that once you reach full employment that inflation becomes a risk that has to be carefully monitored. Curiously it seems to me that if the economy depends on some people being unemployed there is something amiss in the system. And IF having people unemployed is of value to the economy then they should be compensated. There are also other considerations: earning money isn't the end-all be-all of life, where does capitalism provide for arts and crafts? The idea that a pursuit is of no value unless it makes money, especially enough to live on, seems stunted, narrow minded, and drab.
But even more concerning is the current very low unemployment rate combined with huge deficits. How can we have that combination and also such low inflation? Is the low unemployment rate masking a structural problem, such as low wages or the necessity of holding two or more jobs to make ends meet or the high cost of housing? Food for thought. Not just unemployment but under-employment as well, where jobs worked are insufficient for living and so these workers qualify for assistance. A living wage requirement would eliminate the need for such assistance for most of the people in the system. But I also like Yang's basic income, as it allows artists and musicians, dancers, academicians, scientists, etc to pursue their crafts and in the process brighten the lives of everyone. The return is a more complete population. Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : stby our ability to understand RebelAmericanZenDeist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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