Taxes!

[Ebenezr]

Ding ding and round 3 begins with Marlin in the red trunks with 13 wins 2 tko's and 2 losses and in the blue "Osteo" aka Osteomata with ........

[Osteomata]

I have a tendency to ignore areas of agreement in favor battling out the disagreements because frankly, whats the fun telling each how much we agree when you can angrily counter and debate, heh? But let me break character and suggest the things that we are in general agreement about, so as to proceed from some common ground:

1. I think the current model of revenue vs expenditure is unsustainable and will require major structural change to make us solvent. I wish more people were aware of the $40T expenditure for the next ten years, and that even with the GOPs political victory on the debt ceiling, that plan will not in any way make us solvent, it merely delays an inevitable reckoning.

2. Entitelment reform MUST be part of the solution, and will probably take the form of raising Social Security full payment age, adjusting the cost of living method of calucuation for SS, means testing for Medicare, and reducing block grants to states for Medicaide. I do not, however, see any way of maintaining a reasonable, i.e., lower than most of the rest of the industrialized developed world, social safety net without revenue increases (tax code revision) and defense budget major cuts. If you want grandad to get his SSN check, a check that he invested decades of working towards, and his medical need attended to, something else he invested toward, and wish to avoid a dramatic increase in roving packs of diseased illiterate children (im getting hyperbolic for effect here), then we need to not only restrucgure the core programs, but also to fix the utterly captured by special interest (including both corporate and other) tax code and revenue shortfalls.

Where we disagree:
1. I don't particlarly concern myself with an obsessive race breakdown for the poor, but rather try to maintain some respect and compassion for those that are less fortunate than I am. It serves no purpose, and strikes me as spiteful, to dismiss those that are receiving public assistance, as a whole or even generally, as lazy and weak blood suckers, regardless of the ethnic demographics. I try to remember that a large part of the justification for public assistance, particularly those "cradle" programs that so irk you, is that the are intended for the children of the poor, and are intended to serve as an investment. For instance, providing early education intervention, community child rearing classes and infant health check ups tends to reduce later health and development issues which end up costing the state and community even more, much more, down the line. Now maybe you are skeptical of the utility of these programs and believe the benefits are exagerrated. OK! Skepticism is good! But the advocates of these programs are pretty mainstream and not just a bunch Trotskyites in Che Guevara shirts. These programs are rather small potatoes in the whole entitlment program debate, they pale in comparison to the need to revise Medicare, Medicaide, and SS. Now

2. Military compensation: I don't trust your numbers, and I think you have drastically moved the goal posts. You started with "paid way under minimum wage" and have chaged it to "my specific situation, during a specified window of my career does not equal what I would make as a civilian." These are radically different questions, the first is indefensible, the latter is possibly true but not representative for the majority of service members. I served for two decades as well and continue to work on base, and I am all too familiar with the cherry picking of data that goes on to justify how poorly paid service members think they are. Even if I accept your situation at face value, I absolutely do not think it representative, you leave our a number of critical factors, you ignore civilian equivalent requirements, fail to include full compensation, do not include intangible benefits of which there are many, and seem to be all in favor of market determinations accept where it comes to the voluntary service. What about including the wide spread Navy transitional rotations between ship and shore duty? You know as well as I do that shore duty entails WAY less hours, almost no duty section rotation, and no deployments, etc etc. Why not mention the plethora of bonuses and tax advantages? Granted, not everyone of these is applicable to all service members at all times, but a heck of a lot of them are very widespread, and apply to you.
Base Pay
Variable Houseing Allowance (untaxed)
Uniform allowance (untaxed)
Basic Allowance for Subsistance (untaxed, not provided while at see/in the field)
Family Seperation Pay
Hazardous duty Pay
Hostile Fire Pay
Tax exemption for most pay while deployed in our major conflict zones
Health/Dental
Health/Dental for family
G.I. eduction bill
Reenlistment bonus
Nuke pay
Flight pay
SGLI
TSP program
20 retirement plan
Advanced education opportunities.
The hearfelt thanks and appreciation of complete strangers.

There are others, and a whole slew of difficult to monetorize ones. They all have a legit reason (accept those damn pilots sucking down aviator pay while in non-flying status, those guys suck, heh.). I am not arguing they should not exist, but they need to be included in the calculations.

3. This is a minor point towards a larger issue: Cell phones are completely ubiquitous, and nearly required to compete for a job. They cost little more than a land line and are far more utilitarian. If you are honestly gonna get wrapped around the axle on whether a guy on public assistance has a mobile, then we are unlikely to find common ground.

Your right, lets talk about compensation. As senior enlisted, I bring home 60K a year in actual money, all allowances included. Now, lets say my medical insurance is worth 700 a month. Lets make it an even 10K a year with dental. That puts me at 70K a year. I stand duty every 4 days, plus full work days. That is 7-8 duty days a month, we are at 168 hours. So just in duty days, I am already working more hours than a civilian. Now, I still have 16 days of work days left, we usually work 0700 to 1600. Thats another 144 hours a month. This does not include PT time (0530-0630) and so on. We do not get mandatory breaks, we have no OSHA stuff, or working laws or whatnot. We are now at 312 hours a month. I do get 30 days of paid leave each year. That leaves 11 months of this schedule. 3432 hours. That is 20 bucks an hour with all compensation included. That is while we are in port, not deployed. Now, lets say its a deployment cycle, on the CVN76, I did 2.5 deployments in 2 years. So basically, 6 months each year. Those years I put in about 6020 hours, for the same pay. That means I am down to 10 bucks an hour, actual cash is below minimum wage pending what state you live in.
I operate a nuclear reactor, my civilian counter part makes close to double my income, same medical benefits, and only does about 200 hours a month at work. (I used 4 weeks for the sake of simplicity) That is 2200 hours a year. That means he is making around 65-70 bucks an hour to do a much easier job. They only do their actual job, no training, no ship's quals, no maintenance unless they are a maintenance guy, no dealing with NUBs, no going to sea, no threat of life and limb, air conditioning and so on.
Now having said all that, seemings that a DB TSA agent makes 13 an hour starting, I am way under the curve. I am a licensed nuclear operator, 12 years experience, 2 classes away from a bachelors.
Now, I will grant you that there are folks like Yeoman, basically secretaries, that get the same pay I do. There are cooks and all the other menial jobs that are WAY overpaid. They are doing alright compared to their civilian counterpart. They also do no represent the bulk of our armed forces, nor do they represent the most important parts. Without our engineers, mechanics,electronics guys and so on, we would be nothing.

Anyway, back to the welfare thing. Whites account for a little over half of the people on welfare. Made me kind of sad to think that you were right when I saw that on the census site. Then I realized, whites account for 72.4% of the US population. That means, although whites are half the welfare recipients, that means the other half comes from the remaining 28% of non-whites?
Prior to the recession, 1 in 3 blacks were on welfare, or rather 30%. Only 5% of whites. Hispanic/asian were about the same as the blacks. That number has not changed, yet the ratio of whites/nonwhite is getting smaller and smaller, soon to be overtaken and become less than one.
Taking all that, that means that our entitlement will only get more expensive, unless there are some MAJOR cultural changes at a familial level for the minorities.
So explain to me how this is just ranting? Show me some numbers that show otherwise. I pulled my data straight from the US census website. Lots of neat stuff on there. So *gasp* away, now that I have the percentages, it makes me feel worse.

I would love to see data about how many folks on welfare/state/federal aid, regardless of color, have cell phones, internet, cable, drink alcohol or smoke. How many wants do they have while I pay for their needs? Wish there was some way to actually quantify it, but since our government can't cut the wants when we are broke, how can you expect an individual american to do it?

[Golfindoc]

Marlin,
That was pretty funny! I think if we legalized marijuana and taxed it like cigarettes we could eliminate the bnational debt!

[Osteomata]

I'm always a little suspicous of someone who tells me to "do some research" while providing no references, links, or numbers that weren't pulled out of their butt, heh. So:

http://www.photius.com/rankings/tax_...anks_2009.html
Demonstarting USA is ranked 48 out of 65 assessed countries in overall tax burden (not limited to just income tax!) Nearly all other OECD, especially the first worlders, have a greater tax burden, and few of them are attempting to, how can I put this neutrally, do what we do with our military.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...veloped-world/
Tax revnue as a percentage of GDP

http://www.forbes.com/global/2006/0522/032a.html
Another tax burden assessment, but this one using 2004 data, which is not too far off since Bush II tax cuts came into effect in 2001 and 2003.

So yeah, I think our revenue stream compared to the rest of the developed world is lighter. So how about that tax burden compared to other decades? I have mostly 2010 data, so we shall see how 2011 and the sloooooww recovery impacts them, but for now the numbers are pretty convincing regarding our low tax burden:

US tax burden lowest in 60 years as a percentage of GDP, coming from Bruce Bartlett, Reagan and Bush I economist:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...s-high-or-low/

Again, US tax burden lowest point in 60 years, including National, State, and Local taxes:
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/201...4091273594893/

Tax burden as share of national income lowest since 1966:
http://innovationandgrowth.wordpress...t-40-year-low/
That link has the added advantage of showing a table further down that illustrates how much higher the true tax burden would need to be to pay for the deficit. Looks like around 12% to me.

Another lowest in decades:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/...10-taxes_N.htm


So yeah, circ, I took your advice, and did some research.

You pick 2 taxes and rates that help your otherwise false propaganda. The overall tax burden on the American citizen is higher than at any time in the past except during WWII. It is the highest it's ever been in relation to GNP and as S&P stated it is unsustainable for even the next 10 years let alone continuing onward. BO state tax the rich. At what rate? If you took 100% of the richest 10% in the country it wouldn't pay the debt we owe China. It's illconceived. There used to be a time we helped our fellowman without the Liberals telling us how much we should help them. Now we have 70 government organizations redistributing $700,000,000,000.00 every year and the problem gets worse and the solution is more organizations and more wealth distribution. Quit listening to the politicians who get reelected by continueing to feed this monster and do some research.

[Osteomata]

Sounds like a Gary Johnson voter.

LOL, I AM NOT A REPUBLICAN!!! Although I share most republican views, I am more of a libertarian/independent. Not a big fan of religion and I am pro choice. I am pro legalization of pot, to save money in law enforcement and make lots of tax revenue. Be careful when you make assumptions, someone may come back with actual numbers to back up their point...lol.

[Marlin]

I have a tendency to ignore areas in favor battling out the disapgreements becuase frankly, whats the fun telling each how much we agree when you can angrily counter and debate, heh. So let me break character and suggest the things that we are in general agreement about, so as to proceed from some common ground:

1. I think the current model of revenue vs expenditure is unsustainable and will require major structural change to make us solvent. I wish more people were aware of the $40T expenditure for the next ten years, and that even with the GOPs political victory on the debt ceiling, that plan will not in any way make us solvent, it merely delays an inevitable reckoning.

I agree 100%. No one has mentioned the 70Trillion in projected SS deficit, the trillions in FDIC money that is missing.

2. Entitelment reform MUST be part of the solution, and will probably take the form of raising Social Security full payment age, adjusting the cost of living method of calucuation for SS, means testing for Medicare, and reducing block grants to states for Medicaide. I do not, however, see any way of maintaining a reasonable, i.e., lower than most of the rest of the industrialized developed world, social safety net without revenue increases (tax code revision) and defense budget major cuts. I also agree, look what it got Greece and the rest of the EU. Why can't we just leave folks alone and let them make their own finanical decisions. We have no accountability to the individual

If you want grandad to get his SSN check, a check that he invested decades of working towards, and his medical need attended to, something else he invested toward, and wish to avoid a dramatic increase in roving packs of diseased illiterate children (im getting hyperbolic for effect here), then we need to not only restrucgure the core programs, but also to fix the utterly captured by special interest (including both corporate and other) tax code and revenue shortfalls.

Where we disagree:
1. I don't particlarly concern myself with an obsessive race breakdown for the poor, but rather try to maintain some respect and compassion for those that are less fortunate than I am. It serves no purpose, and strikes me as spiteful, to dismiss those that are receiving public assistance, as a whole or even generally, as lazy and weak blood suckers, regardless of the ethnic demographics. So regardless of the facts, you are going to ignore them and live life as ignorance is bliss? The issue has nothing to do with color, but 100% to do with culutre. You can give them all the money and special programs you want, but until you address their personal culture, which as a society we so enthusiastically embrace, it will keep happening. I have ants in my garage, they were getting into my dog's food. I took away the dog food, the ants went away.
I try to remember that a large part of the justification for public assistance, particularly those "cradle" programs that so irk you, is that the are intended for the children of the poor, and are intended to serve as an investment. For instance, providing early education intervention, community child rearing classes and infant health check ups tends to reduce later health and development issues which end up costing the state and community even more, much more, down the line. Now maybe you are skeptical of the utility of these programs and believe the benefits are exagerrated. OK! Skepticism is good! But the advocates of these programs are pretty mainstream and not just a bunch Trotskyites in Che Guevara shirts. These programs are rather small potatoes in the whole entitlment program debate, they pale in comparison to the need to revise Medicare, Medicaide, and SS. Now

2. Military compensation: I don't trust your numbers,I included all my pay, base, bah, bas, SDAP, 700 a month for insurance policy for family of 4. I did not include my once a year 425 for uniforms, got me there. and I think you have drastically moved the goal posts. You started with "paid way under minimum wage" If you were to consider that by law, all those hours beyond 40/week are overtime,I have a million dollar check owed to me! and have chaged it to "my specific situation, during a specified window of my career does not equal what I would make as a civilian." These are radically different questions, the first is indefensible, the latter is possibly true but not representative for the majority of service members.Which is why I said that it is based on my scenario and my job. Technical jobs in the miltary are way underpaid. I am also senior enlisted, lets pull these same numbers for a 21 year old nuke that is only an E4. He makes not even half of what I make. I served for two decades as well and continue to work on base, and I am all too familiar with the cherry picking of data that goes on to justify how poorly paid service members think they are. Even if I accept your situation at face value, I absolutely do not think it representative, you leave our a number of critical factors, you ignore civilian equivalent requirements, fail to include full compensation, do not include intangible benefits of which there are many, and seem to be all in favor of market determinations accept where it comes to the voluntary service. What about including the wide spread Navy transitional rotations between ship and shore duty? You know as well as I do that shore duty entails WAY less hours, almost no duty section rotation, and no deployments, etc etc. For my sepcific rate, our biggest shore duty is on a submarine working 12 hour day rotating shiftwork for 3 years. Actually more work for less pay, since they take sea pay away. Why not mention the plethora of bonuses and tax advantages?Only people that still get bonuses in the Navy is limited to a handfull of rates. Basically nukes, Cryptos, seals/eod and a few others. Granted, not everyone of these is applicable to all service members at all times, but a heck of a lot of them are very widespread, and apply to you.
Base Pay
Variable Houseing Allowance (untaxed)
Uniform allowance (untaxed)
Basic Allowance for Subsistance (untaxed, not provided while at see/in the field)
Family Seperation Pay
Hazardous duty Pay
Hostile Fire Pay
Tax exemption for most pay while deployed in our major conflict zones
Health/Dental
Health/Dental for family
G.I. eduction bill
Reenlistment bonus
Nuke pay
Flight pay
SGLI
TSP programMy federal civillian brothers get matched TSP contributions. Military does not give us anything, its just an easy to use ROth, not sure how this is a benny? Considering an IRS agent or FBI can get his contribution matched, I consider mine a detriment
20 retirement planNot for long. Remember my numbers(which are not far fetched in any way, by the time a 20yr career is over, you have worked 30-40 years of a regular job
Advanced education opportunities.Not sure what this means?
The hearfelt thanks and appreciation of complete strangers.True, it always awkward when someone says "thanks for your service" I never know how to react to that. On a callous fiscal note, their thanks and 75 cents will get you a cold Coke.

There are others, and a whole slew of difficult to monetorize ones. They all have a legit reason (accept those damn pilots sucking down aviator pay while in non-flying status, those guys suck, heh.). I am not arguing they should not exist, but they need to be included in the calculations. Thats fine, double my compensated salary to 140k, I am still way behind the civilian equivalent for my job

3. This is a minor point towards a larger issue: Cell phones are completely ubiquitous, and nearly required to compete for a job. They cost little more than a land line and are far more utilitarian. If you are honestly gonna get wrapped around the axle on whether a guy on public assistance has a mobile, then we are unlikely to find common ground.

You know what I mean, I notice you left out smoking/drinking/drugs. At 50 bucks a carton, or 20 bucks a bottle and so on. Incredibly expensive. I was just using those as non-neccessities that have somehow become entitlements, like cable or high speed internet.

Yikes, alot of those pays I do not get as sailor. I have in the past received family sep allowance, 200 a month I think, so lets make my income 62K, but then I lose 350 for BAS, so I am still behind. All people, civilian or otherwise get tax free in warzones, so not a military benny, hell, a contractor truck driver makes 150k a year to do the same job the E3 next to him does for 30K.
GI bill, I had to pay for that. Not a free benny. I do get TA paid by my command. They have to, for awhile, the navy made it a requirement to have an associates to make E7, a bachelors for E8 and so on. It was rescended two years ago based on our optempo and inability to attend college while in the sandbox or underwater.

Long story short, there is some scamming in the milatary, as I already said. We also do far and away more than our civilian brothers. Ask a civillian x-ray tech to clean the head, you'll get a blank stare. Call up a secretary at 3am and tell them they need to come in and help with paperwork, "What?! Thats double time!!" Ask your local Pepboys mechanic to stay overnight every couple of days to work on cars, all at salary pay. Not gonna hppen. OSHA and labor laws prevent that stuff. None of those things apply to service members. And yes, we are all volunteers, no union, and we are DAMN good at our jobs.

[Marlin]

Sounds like a Gary Johnson voter.

Huh, never heard of em. I just took a few minutes to look, but from a snapshot, sounds about right for me. Let people fend for themselves, give them their money back. Let me make my own mistakes, and most definitely let me suffer the conseqeunces for those mistakes.

[vt_maverick]

IMHO you guys are wasting your breath arguing over whether military pay is inflated. The real fluff in the department budget is in white papers and weapons / systems development programs. Besides Osteo, aren't you trying to make the point that the military is just flat out too big? If so it seems arguing over what our guys make vs. civilians vs. private citizens is a waste of time, since the answer is just to deep-six a large percentage of our mission / equipment / personnel. If you do want to argue over compensation, a better comparison might be what our military make compared to their equivalents in the UK and other economically "healthy" countries.

On a general note, I'm going to be a father for the second time this Saturday if everything goes to plan. But what a bummer of a time to have a kid.

[Ebenezr]

Ding round 3 is over and appears to be tied as the Judges do not appear to be impressed with the legalization of Marijuana - a foolish stance by Marlin in the red trunks neither are they impressed with Osteomata calling out that our pilots are "sucking down aviator pay'

[Marlin]

Ding round 3 is over and appears to be tied as the Judges do not appear to be impressed with the legalization of Marijuana - a foolish stance by Marlin in the red trunks neither are they impressed with Osteomata calling out that our pilots are "sucking down aviator pay'

LMAO, why can't pot be legal. Alcohol is a thousand times worse than pot. How many billions do we spend in the "drug war" and incarceration when we have real man made drugs that actually can kill you or cause you to kill others floating around? Its ok for pharmacorp to push opiates and benzos on everyone form their man made labs, but a natural substance that requires no processing? Come on, at some point, you have to admit enough is enough. Granted, I say this knowing that I have smoked pot one time, when I was a junior in highschool. So perhaps I am basing it on my observations of my little brother who smoked up from 8th grade through highschool, now he has a masters and is a social worker...go figure.

[Ebenezr]

LMAO, why can't pot be legal. Alcohol is a thousand times worse than pot. How many billions do we spend in the "drug war" and incarceration when we have real man made drugs that actually can kill you or cause you to kill others floating around? Its ok for pharmacorp to push opiates and benzos on everyone form their man made labs, but a natural substance that requires no processing? Come on, at some point, you have to admit enough is enough. Granted, I say this knowing that I have smoked pot one time, when I was a junior in highschool. So perhaps I am basing it on my observations of my little brother who smoked up from 8th grade through highschool, now he has a masters and is a social worker...go figure.

And I bet you didn't inhale.....Ha ha ha ha.

[vt_maverick]

So perhaps I am basing it on my observations of my little brother who smoked up from 8th grade through highschool, now he has a masters and is a social worker...go figure.

That's funny, my wife has a friend who followed that exact same progression!

[Marlin]

And I bet you didn't inhale.....Ha ha ha ha.

I did, but didn't do much for me. I only drank a handful of times in highschool as well. I didn't have time, APcalc, AP physics II and so on. I also worked full time to pay insurance and payment on my sweet *** 1988 Ford Probe, which I totaled and replaced with a brand new 1997 Honda Civic. I paid my own cell, payment and insurance. That means I worked every shift I could get at the theater. No time for drugs and alcohol for this guy. My parents taught me work ethic and the idea that if you want something, yo uhav eto work for it. I had paper routes, mowed lawns, shovelled snow, bailed hay, you name it.

[circmand]

Marlin,
That was pretty funny! I think if we legalized marijuana and taxed it like cigarettes we could eliminate the bnational debt!

Now that the libereals have outlawed smoking everywhere noone will buy pot because there is no place to smoke it. And what happens if we do. Everyone will have the munchies just around the time Michelle Obama browbeats her hubby into outlawing junk food. I'm sorry but rice cakes and green tea dont cure the munchies

[Osteomata]

But I'm not arguing that military pay is inflated, I am arguing that since we have an all volunteer force, that it is about right, and those who comlain about being underpaid oftern disort their actual compensation. But as to your larger point: yes agreed.

IMHO you guys are wasting your breath arguing over whether military pay is inflated. The real fluff in the department budget is in white papers and weapons / systems development programs. Besides Osteo, aren't you trying to make the point that the military is just flat out too big? If so it seems arguing over what our guys make vs. civilians vs. private citizens is a waste of time, since the answer is just to deep-six a large percentage of our mission / equipment / personnel. If you do want to argue over compensation, a better comparison might be what our military make compared to their equivalents in the UK and other economically "healthy" countries.

On a general note, I'm going to be a father for the second time this Saturday if everything goes to plan. But what a bummer of a time to have a kid.