Taxes!

[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.

[Osteomata]

I only want to address two points, because the military compensation issue is a rabbit whole upon which we will never agree. So, two points:

[COLOR="red"]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.

This is particularly instructive and points to exactly what I am saying about not viewing with total disgust those less fortunate. If your comparison is with animals and bugs, that says a lot about your entering attitude with regard to the poor. My point as to race and ethnic breakdown is that the problems and challenges of the bottom income brackets, particularly the poverty stricken, transcend those particular categories, and worrying excessively about what percentage happen to be latino is less then helpful. Grinding poverty may indeed by accerabted by culture failures and norms, but those same failure are present in Appalachia as well as Harlem. If I roll my eyes at your primary issue, which seems to be pointing out the ethnic breakdowns, its not "living in ignorant bliss" so much as believing that the racial breakdown numbers aren't particularly instructive.

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.

I left those out because I have no idea what percentage smoke, drink, or use drugs. I was unwilling to make gross generalizations. I am betting that they don't spend $20 a bottle though.

[Marlin]

I only want to address two points, because the military compensation issue is a rabbit whole upon which we will never agree. So, two points:


This is particularly instructive and points to exactly what I am saying about not viewing with total disgust those less fortunate. If your comparison is with animals and bugs, that says a lot about your entering attitude with regard to the poor. My point as to race and ethnic breakdown is that the problems and challenges of the bottom income brackets, particularly the poverty stricken, transcend those particular categories, and worrying excessively about what percentage happen to be latino is less then helpful. Grinding poverty may indeed by accerabted by culture failures and norms, but those same failure are present in Appalachia as well as Harlem. If I roll my eyes at your primary issue, which seems to be pointing out the ethnic breakdowns, its not "living in ignorant bliss" so much as believing that the racial breakdown numbers aren't particularly instructive.



I left those out because I have no idea what percentage smoke, drink, or use drugs. I was unwilling to make gross generalizations. I am betting that they don't spend $20 a bottle though.

I did use the bugs and animals concept on purpose. The driving dynamic behind the process is the same. Poeple and animals are very much the same at a base level, especially when it comes to survival. If you offer people something, such as foodstamps and welfare and so on, in exchange for doing nothing, then that is what they will do. The ants found a way to get free food and expend a minimal amount of effort. I took away the easy to get free food, the ants had to go find their food elsewhere. Its not like the majority were going from 6 figures to 15k in welfare. Those folks will work their *** off to gain their previous life style back and this is a temporary setback. The generational poor have always been poor and are therefore ok with always being poor. To say its not driven by ethnic triggers is ignoring a completely related cause for the sake of PC is ridiculous, the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. We have to change their culture, wait the generation or two for the old to die off, and voila, everyone is happy! Ignoring the cultural shortcomings is going to result in the same poverty statistics for generations to come.

As for the 20 bucks a bottle, you're probably right, but if they are buying the Mccormicks at 4 bucks a bottle, they are probably not just drinking on Friday night and are still spending some bucks per week.

As for smokes, this is from Minnesota, so take it as just that:

"Seifert said the welfare recipients who use tobacco -- up to 40 percent of them, at a cost of at least $1,200 a year for a pack-a-day smoker -- could be offered cessation programs through the private Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco."

Here is a recent one from Arkansas:
"According to ATR, “55 percent of smokers are 'working poor,' and one in four smokers lives below the poverty line.” Additionally, on average, smokers, whose median income is a little more than $36,000, make about 30 percent less than non-smokers.”"

Smoking seems to be more prevalent in the poor communities. Be it education or social culture, I have no idea. The can read the warnings on the pack just as well as I can. I quit smoking 10 years ago when I did my budget for when I got married. I was spending 50 bucks a month on smokes. I know smokes are way more expensive now, that is a chunk of change. A carton here in SC is 50 bucks. 100-150 bucks a month, thats half the rent in a crappy apartment. That would pay for my groceries if I went bare bones and so on.

[Osteomata]

I understand your incentive/disinsentive based argument, I just don't think its true because the data does not support it. It sounds good but doesn't actually play out in real life. With a more robust welfare system developing since the later 1930s, we have not seen an increase in the poverty rate, but rather a significant drop from the 1940s-1970, and it has held roughly steady at 14% since then, although the current recession has caused an upward trend. What I think we get from these various programs is a lack of starvation, mass malnutrition, gross illiteracy, and epidemics that your proposed solution would generate. You would get your two generation die off alright, just not in the way you mean.

I did use the bugs and animals concept on purpose. The driving dynamic behind the process is the same. Poeple and animals are very much the same at a base level, especially when it comes to survival. If you offer people something, such as foodstamps and welfare and so on, in exchange for doing nothing, then that is what they will do. The ants found a way to get free food and expend a minimal amount of effort. I took away the easy to get free food, the ants had to go find their food elsewhere. Its not like the majority were going from 6 figures to 15k in welfare. Those folks will work their *** off to gain their previous life style back and this is a temporary setback. The generational poor have always been poor and are therefore ok with always being poor. To say its not driven by ethnic triggers is ignoring a completely related cause for the sake of PC is ridiculous, the proof is in the pudding so to speak. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. We have to change their culture, wait the generation or two for the old to die off, and voila, everyone is happy! Ignoring the cultural shortcomings is going to result in the same poverty statistics for generations to come.

As for the 20 bucks a bottle, you're probably right, but if they are buying the Mccormicks at 4 bucks a bottle, they are probably not just drinking on Friday night and are still spending some bucks per week.

As for smokes, this is from Minnesota, so take it as just that:

"Seifert said the welfare recipients who use tobacco -- up to 40 percent of them, at a cost of at least $1,200 a year for a pack-a-day smoker -- could be offered cessation programs through the private Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco."

Here is a recent one from Arkansas:
"According to ATR, ?55 percent of smokers are 'working poor,' and one in four smokers lives below the poverty line.? Additionally, on average, smokers, whose median income is a little more than $36,000, make about 30 percent less than non-smokers.?"

Smoking seems to be more prevalent in the poor communities. Be it education or social culture, I have no idea. The can read the warnings on the pack just as well as I can. I quit smoking 10 years ago when I did my budget for when I got married. I was spending 50 bucks a month on smokes. I know smokes are way more expensive now, that is a chunk of change. A carton here in SC is 50 bucks. 100-150 bucks a month, thats half the rent in a crappy apartment. That would pay for my groceries if I went bare bones and so on.

[Marlin]

I understand your incentive/disinsentive based argument, I just don't think its true because the data does not support it. It sounds good but doesn't actually play out in real life. With a more robust welfare system developing since the later 1930s, we have not seen an increase in the poverty rate, but rather a significant drop from the 1940s-1970, and it has held roughly steady at 14% since then, although the current recession has caused an upward trend. What I think we get from these various programs is a lack of starvation, mass malnutrition, gross illiteracy, and epidemics that your proposed solution would generate. You would get your two generation die off alright, just not in the way you mean.

So we are stuck. We know the current system doesn't work, as evident by our current situation and the fact they are breeding their way to the top via numbers. My way is probably too callous and may result in many deaths.

So, what do we do now? I thought my short term assistance was fair. No lifers allowed. When I went out to Moab, I stayed a night in Salt Lake with a buddy's parents. His family were of course Mormon. They have some interesting practices. His dad was a roofer, fell off a roof and was injured. Rather than collect workman's comp and whatnot, his church pays his bills and helps him out. In exchange, he works out the church doing what he can. He does paperwork, cleans, helps with their lineage research and so on.
Once he was back on his feet, he began paying back that debt via a direct tithe. Makes sense to me.
Why can't our system work like that? Oh wait, thats because there is no exchange for their assistance. They do absolutely nothing for it!!!! NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING. I don't get it. If it doesn't cost anything, then it has no value to them. Why don't they have to do menial labor?! How about we chase illegals off and use prisoners and aid receivers? Bingo, farms get low wage workers, its not "unfair" because they receive a salary. They would hate their job, and therefore do anything they could to get out of it!

I am sure there are all kinds of pitfalls and its a violation of the civil rights to receive aid in exchange for work. The drug test would be an invasion of their privacy and all. (No one makes you go on welfare, I do drug tests all the time, my friends that work at Dupont do them monthly)

Let the US default, let the revolution begin, there will be some hard times for sure, but in the end it will be better for the nation.

[Ldub]

But I'd like to know why...

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

[Osteomata]

It is a fair question, and I am not particularly hard over on the issue, nor especially well versed in the argument. Three things spring to mind, let me run them up the flag pole:
1. The majority of the high paying jobs you are referring to are in the corporate/private sector. I think it is one thing to enter into voluntary contract with an employer in which they pay you hefty salary in exchange for standards of conduct of all types, and quite another to cede to the State yet another power over personal privacy and actions for an ever widening sector of the populace.
2. Food stamps versus a high paying job? No contest. Lots and lots and lots of people would trade the first in favor of the second.
3. Given that these programs dramatically impact the children of the poor to an even greater degree than the adults, are you not simply stigmatizing poverty rather than merely government assistance?

But I would like to know

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

[Ebenezr]

But I'd like to know why...

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

It's real simple Dub, your living in a country of idiots.

[VXR]

But I'd like to know why...

I have to provide a clean urine sample to get most any well paying job.

Yet those who receive the benefits of my labors, through socialist govt programs, have to provide nothing more than a signature & a pulse...

Someone PLEASE splain it to me...

Just kidding X2

[Osteomata]

Why are we stuck? I don't think the current system is particularly broken. In exchange for moderate assistance, we preclude a significant chunk of our society from ending up in prisons (expensive), diseased (dangerous to the herd) or further destabilizing our country do to rampant illiterate unhealthy starving mobs. it also provides quite a number of people the opportunity to get back in teh game rather than end up in an every spiraling cycle towards grinding poverty. The flaws in our social safety net system, which by industrialized world standards is pretty conservative, is not these limited cost provisions that worry you so, but rather the structural aspects of the three big ones (Medicare, Medicaid, SS). Food programs and dozens of other lower scale programs make us all a bit safer and our nation more stable.

And as a minor recommendation for your future discussions with people more sensitive than me: it just sounds a little odd to refer to them as "breeding" their way to the top." Its that whole animal thing again. Take it or leave it. Besides, if minority representation in our country has been growing steadily, and yet the poverty threshold has held steady, does this not refute your assertion that these breeding minorities are endangering our future?

As for just hoping that churches and what not will take over that responsibility: nothing is stopping them now! Nothing Nothing Nothing, as you would say. Government programs do not exclude the participation of churches and the religious in charity work outside of a few very narrow and socially contentious areas like adoption agencies. What we know from the historical record is that exclusive church/philanthropic based charity is grossly insufficient and unevenly applied, to say the least. Besides, for every anecdote you can provide about the white guy in Moab, do you think I can't come up with an equally compelling story of a black guy in Baltimore or Hispanic guy in Miami that got himself back on his feet, or was able to transition out of poverty to college, first in his family etc etc due to a gov program? Anecdote anecdote anecdote. Which is not evidence.

Every single program that is in any way broad and semi-comprehensive will have cheaters and various levels of abuse or inefficiency, but the presence of such issues does not mean the program as a whole is wrong or a net negative impact on our country, particularly given the alternatives.

Immigration is a hole nother issue and would only further derail us for sure. But for the drug testing thing: for someone so distrustful of government programs, you seem might quick to render yet another intrusive power to the State. No way that would be abused heh? No way it would steadily spread beyond a few select aid programs, all in the name of "won't someone think of the children" or "terrorism" or the "war on drugs" or whatever, into ever broadening, unevenly applied, deeply abused authority by multiple levels of government.

So we are stuck. We know the current system doesn't work, as evident by our current situation and the fact they are breeding their way to the top via numbers. My way is probably too callous and may result in many deaths.

So, what do we do now? I thought my short term assistance was fair. No lifers allowed. When I went out to Moab, I stayed a night in Salt Lake with a buddy's parents. His family were of course Mormon. They have some interesting practices. His dad was a roofer, fell off a roof and was injured. Rather than collect workman's comp and whatnot, his church pays his bills and helps him out. In exchange, he works out the church doing what he can. He does paperwork, cleans, helps with their lineage research and so on.
Once he was back on his feet, he began paying back that debt via a direct tithe. Makes sense to me.
Why can't our system work like that? Oh wait, thats because there is no exchange for their assistance. They do absolutely nothing for it!!!! NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING. I don't get it. If it doesn't cost anything, then it has no value to them. Why don't they have to do menial labor?! How about we chase illegals off and use prisoners and aid receivers? Bingo, farms get low wage workers, its not "unfair" because they receive a salary. They would hate their job, and therefore do anything they could to get out of it!

I am sure there are all kinds of pitfalls and its a violation of the civil rights to receive aid in exchange for work. The drug test would be an invasion of their privacy and all. (No one makes you go on welfare, I do drug tests all the time, my friends that work at Dupont do them monthly)

Let the US default, let the revolution begin, there will be some hard times for sure, but in the end it will be better for the nation.