-
- Ray Jay
- Ambassador
-
- Posts: 4991
- Joined: 08 Jun 2000, 10:26 am
08 Mar 2013, 5:14 am
freeman2 wrote:You could make $450 K from investments if you're married and still pay somewhere between 16-17% (once the 3.8% is factored in for the amount over $250K). I would not say capital gains taxes are really higher than in the Clinton era. They could be, for some people, but it is not that simple overall. And, of course, Reagan at one point had capital gains and ordinary income taxed at the same rate.
I think there are a few problems with this line of thinking:
1. Obama's new tax plan (with just a couple of minor exceptions) is for people making over $1 million per year. So this isn't part of the current political debate.
2. Reagan did have a higher tax rate on capital gains (28%) but he also had that same rate on ordinary income which is over 12% lower than current rates. Why doesn't Obama campaign on a more just tax code and lower marginal tax rates and close loop holes.
3. I don't think the objective is to have as high a rate as possible on all types of income at all levels of income as has existed in the past 30 years, and to refuse to cut any government spending until that happens. Obama certainly didn't campaign on that.
If you check out some of the websites on government waste, you can see that it's rampant. Last week I spoke with a guy who spent 5 days at a fancy hotel on the government's dime along with 2,000 other guests for some sort of conference. He said there was very little that he learned there that he couldn't have learned via the telephone and the internet. This is what they should be cutting, not air traffic controllers.
Most people I know have worked for businesses that have at times institued salary freezes or reductions, or have let go 10% of their staff so that the business could keep going. Everyone grumbles, but then the work does get done and people focus on what is truly important.
The reality is that many people in government (and in fact all organizations -- private and non-profit) focus on their bureaucratic objectives as opposed to the appropriate mission. That's why they make spending cuts seem so difficult. But that's a subject for another day.
-
- GMTom
- Administrator
-
- Posts: 11284
- Joined: 14 Feb 2000, 8:40 am
08 Mar 2013, 7:16 am
an example of how the cuts are hurting...
My daughters boyfriend (maybe soon to be son-in-law?) he is a border patrol agent in Southern California. Not only did his overtime hours get killed (and he worked a lot of overtime) but his Sunday pay was cut to normal pay. OK, fair enough so far but this alone will make things tight, but he also has had his hours reduced to 4 days a week!
-
- bbauska
- Administrator
-
- Posts: 7463
- Joined: 26 Jun 2000, 1:13 pm
08 Mar 2013, 8:44 am
Was this cut necessary in the light of the link I posted above? Or is this the maximum pain?
-
- GMTom
- Administrator
-
- Posts: 11284
- Joined: 14 Feb 2000, 8:40 am
08 Mar 2013, 8:56 am
My guess is it's partially due to simple math, funding cuts will result in fewer hours but I do not discount part is also due to the Presidents order to make the cuts hurt. Childish nonsense, absolute childishness!
-
- bbauska
- Administrator
-
- Posts: 7463
- Joined: 26 Jun 2000, 1:13 pm
08 Mar 2013, 9:34 am
I agree with Rudewalrus. A pox on both houses!
That is why I recommended a 20% cut (not reduction of increase, but a cut) on all budgets, because they can't agree.
-
- Sassenach
- Emissary
-
- Posts: 3405
- Joined: 12 Jun 2006, 2:01 am
08 Mar 2013, 9:36 am
The reality is that many people in government (and in fact all organizations -- private and non-profit) focus on their bureaucratic objectives as opposed to the appropriate mission. That's why they make spending cuts seem so difficult. But that's a subject for another day.
I think the problem is the prevalent attitude in all really big organisations, but especially so in government where the profit motive doesn't exist, that overspending on your budget is a misdemeanour but underspending is a crime. If you spend less than your budget in a given year then chances are your budget will be reduced for the following year. Now, for the organisation as a whole that's a good thing of course, but for the individual department it's very bad. As a result you often tend to see wasteful spending just to make sure that the budget all gets spent. In Britain the financial year runs from April to March. I work in the public sector and I've noticed over the years how often we see unnecessary new office equipment, hiring of temporary staff, loads of available overtime and all kinds of other spending that suddenly starts to happen around January onwards and ends abruptly in April. I'm sure the same will happen in major corporations, although perhaps not to the same degree.
-
- GMTom
- Administrator
-
- Posts: 11284
- Joined: 14 Feb 2000, 8:40 am
08 Mar 2013, 12:58 pm
Similar in the corporate world...
Here where I work we always see some big sales the end of December, "budget busters", they have money to spend or it goes to "waste" and as you said, if they can get by with less this year, then they can do so next year as well, they get their budget reduced. So the incentive is to spend every penny and not save the company any money at all. It most certainly is worse in the public sector no doubt but yes it does happen in the private sector for certain!
-
- Ray Jay
- Ambassador
-
- Posts: 4991
- Joined: 08 Jun 2000, 10:26 am
08 Mar 2013, 3:17 pm
I'm starting to like Tom Colburn more and more. From today's WSJ
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 02790.htmlTransportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that cuts to air-traffic control will force flight delays but won't compromise safety or cause air disasters.
He can avoid both with smart cuts. I sent him a letter this week detailing $1.2 billion in savings that would more than cover his $600 million shortfall. He could start by curtailing subsidies for "Airports to Nowhere" that serve fewer than 10 passengers a day.
...
The same is true of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Instead of forcing Americans to spend more time in airport screening lines, she can find savings in the wasteful grant program that gave America an underwater robot for Columbus, Ohio, and a BearCat armored-personnel carrier to guard a pumpkin festival in Keene, N.H. (population 23,000). Trimming this $830 million grant program by just one third could avoid Transportation Security Administration furloughs entirely.
But if cabinet secretaries insist on using furloughs, they could start by furloughing employees who already don't bother to show up for work. In a 2008 report, I found that the 3.5 million hours that federal employees were AWOL in 2007 could be used to screen 1.7 billion checked bags, or enough to avoid security delays for nearly four years.
Another source of potential savings is duplication of federal services, which accounts for $364 billion spent every year, according to the Government Accountability Office. Washington spends $30 million for 15 financial-literacy programs run by 13 separate agencies. Taxpayers also spend $3.1 billion on 209 separate science, technology, engineering and mathematics education programs across 13 agencies. Why not fund one good program in these areas instead of dozens that don't work and waste money?
...
Since 2002, total federal spending has increased nearly 89% while median household income has dropped 5% and median wealth has dropped 23%.
-
- Sassenach
- Emissary
-
- Posts: 3405
- Joined: 12 Jun 2006, 2:01 am
08 Mar 2013, 5:02 pm
It's a good article, but there's a degree of dishonesty there I think. A lot of the areas he highlights either wouldn't save very much money or wouldn't be politically acceptable to Republicans even if they did. The obvious example is the subsidies to airports that only serve about 10 flights a day. These will overwhelmingly be situated in rural districts that almost certainly vote Republican in big numbers. How many congressmen in these districts would be happy to vote through an abolition of the subsidies that keep their local airfields afloat ?
I'm also a bit skeptical about the '3.5 million hours' that federal staff were AWOL. That strikes me as bullshit, but even if it were true it isn't exactly simple to recover all that time and transfer all the funds that were paid out to these staff into productive work. What he's talking about is the mass sacking of staff who took too many sick days, which is an enormously complex endeavour, not the sort of thing you can accomplish with the stroke of a pen.
I do agree that cuts should be made and that the Obama team seem to be playing hardball on this to a degree that isn't warranted, but at the same time it's important to be honest and realistic.
-
- Archduke Russell John
- Dignitary
-
- Posts: 3239
- Joined: 29 Jan 2003, 9:54 am
08 Mar 2013, 6:40 pm
Sassenach wrote:I'm also a bit skeptical about the '3.5 million hours' that federal staff were AWOL. That strikes me as bullshit, but even if it were true it isn't exactly simple to recover all that time and transfer all the funds that were paid out to these staff into productive work. What he's talking about is the mass sacking of staff who took too many sick days, which is an enormously complex endeavour, not the sort of thing you can accomplish with the stroke of a pen.
It is probably not too many sick days but "ghost" employees. For an example on the local level is a recent
scandal in a local School District. Part of the scandal was 2 "ghost" employees. There were two individuals who were on the District's grounds crew for two years but never showed up for work. Between the two of them they received $200,000 in salary over the two years. What I think the 3.5 M work hours is people who are patronage jobs who do not show up at work but still collect their salary.
-
- Ray Jay
- Ambassador
-
- Posts: 4991
- Joined: 08 Jun 2000, 10:26 am
08 Mar 2013, 10:20 pm
All good points. To his credit Colburn has also been openly critical of his own party and their spending.
-
- Neal Anderth
- Truck Series Driver (Pro II)
-
- Posts: 897
- Joined: 29 Dec 2010, 1:02 pm
12 Mar 2013, 10:45 am
GMTom wrote:an example of how the cuts are hurting...
My daughters boyfriend (maybe soon to be son-in-law?) he is a border patrol agent in Southern California. Not only did his overtime hours get killed (and he worked a lot of overtime) but his Sunday pay was cut to normal pay. OK, fair enough so far but this alone will make things tight, but he also has had his hours reduced to 4 days a week!
Yes, to go from mandatory overtime to a 32 hour work week would cut take home pay by 40%. Unless he was living on the cheap to begin with that would be hard to pull off in SoCal.
I agree with the RP plan, scrap the entire F-35 program to get your savings:
Japan has warned that it may halt their purchase if the unit costs increase, and Canada has indicated it has not fully committed to purchasing the aircraft. The United States is projected to spend an estimated US$323 billion for development and procurement on the F-35 program, making it the most expensive defense program ever. The total life-cycle cost for the entire American fleet is estimated to be US$1.51 trillion over its 50-year life, or $618 million per plane. Testifying before a Canadian parliamentary committee in 2011, Rear Admiral Arne Røksund of Norway estimated that his country's 52 F-35 fighter jets will cost $769 million each over their operational lifetime.
