Senate Fiscal Cliff Bill Approved by House

[Shellfish]

Originally Posted by adpimiz

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them...

What? We have a 50% unemployment rate? OMG!

And since you're a college student, I don't think you're a taxpayer either.

[adpimiz]

Hey now, I just thought the quotes were funny. Not that I said they were true or that I necessarily agreed with them.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by DGTess

In my 30+ years in government, I've come to believe we could do what needs to be done with 40% fewer people. Here are just some examples why I say 40% - it may be more or less, but ...
- a person full-time from November to January working on Combined Federal Campaign - from each directorate of each agency
- most government employees I saw spend as much time in idle chit-chat as they do working on any given day. Buying a house, selling puppies, (not)selling cookies/candy/giftwrap for the kids (by simply putting out an order sheet, and waiting for coworkers to ask, the more chitchat, all take place on government time.
- Don't like the way another office with which you work does/documents their job? No problem. Just have one of our people do/document it "our way".
- Duplicate information because computer systems can't talk to one another - in the name of "security" (theater) or "privacy".
- And as I said, every person who wants to make his mark must grow his program - whether that means making new regulations to enforce, sticking his nose somewhere else, or any of a gazillion different things ... what gets rewarded gets done.

I've worked for two major private corporations, and it's my experience that these things are rampant in the private sector as well. I have never worked in government, so I can't do a side-by-side comparison, but I think a lot of the stereotypes about bad management, laziness, etc. in the government sector are far from absent just because there is a profit motive.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by adpimiz

Hey now, I just thought the quotes were funny. Not that I said they were true or that I necessarily agreed with them.

I get that -- my saying that they can be enjoyed at face value was meant to acknowledge that. Sorry if I wasn't as clear as I could have been.

I think it's just that the older I get, the more I find that bumper sticker sloganeering -- including the sloganeering that I find funny or that's sympathetic to my position -- is part of the bigger problem we have in this country. I think it tends to get people talking past each other rather than to each other and subtly encourages approaching complex issues with simplistic solutions. And I think it often tends to discourage respect for opposing viewpoints. That's what I was reacting to.

[adpimiz]

Oh no, I understand. I was more responding to Shellfish, who somewhat seemed like he/she thought I actually believed the sayings.

And yes, I agree that is does seem to encourage disrespect towards opposing viewpoints. I just thought they were amusing, and thought I'd share.

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

And exactly where does the idea that "half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them" come from?

People jump on that "47% of the people don't pay federal income tax" and make assumptions. They don't pay attention to the stats that show that most of them are the elderly (who paid their share their whole lives and are now living on fixed incomes), college students (who will, presumably pay their fair share in the future), and those who are too disabled to work (and I don't know what people think we should do about them... let them die???).

I've yet to meet anybody who would rather be sitting home collecting barely enough to live on than working, paying taxes, and making enough to cover their essential expenses.

All those welfare folks with their $120 a month in food stamps are really living high on the hog, don't you know? So what if they can't be used to buy toilet paper or diapers.

[UGAalum94]

I think the 47% issue is perhaps a different problem that just reducing it to makers and takers, which I know a lot of folks want to do.

How do you effect entitlement reform if 47% of voters benefit from "entitlements" of one kind or another? How are we going to pay for all the spending that we are presently projected to need?

The whole "tax the rich" "make them pay their fair share" rhetoric was great, but I think most people concede that you can't fund it by taxing people with incomes at the level that most folks think can afford to pay more in taxes.

And I don't know a lot of people likely to be affected by the income caps you most read about, but for the ones I do (It's really one family-owned business), I do think it's plausible that they will scale back the volume of business they do and have more time with their families etc, than continuing to work ridiculously, long hard hours to basically see less take home pay. I don't think the country's going to collapse because of it or anything, but I do think it's possible that people's behavior will change. Incentives matter.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

The whole "tax the rich" "make them pay their fair share" rhetoric was great, but I think most people concede that you can't fund it by taxing people with incomes at the level that most folks think can afford to pay more in taxes.

What's that level? Simply letting the Bush era tax cuts expire would do much to close the deficit.

[AGDee]

Why the assumption that just because they don't pay taxes, they benefit from entitlements? Hypo surely isn't getting any entitlements but isn't paying taxes either.

I find a big irony in calling Social Security an "entitlement" when the amount you receive is directly correlated to how much you put in. If you didn't pay it, you don't get it. It isn't welfare. People paid into that, expecting to get money back out of it. And if it survives, then 100% of the people who pay in get something back (unless they die before they reach retirement age, in which case their spouse and/or children get some of it).

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by AGDee

Why the assumption that just because they don't pay taxes, they benefit from entitlements? Hypo surely isn't getting any entitlements but isn't paying taxes either.

I find a big irony in calling Social Security an "entitlement" when the amount you receive is directly correlated to how much you put in. If you didn't pay it, you don't get it. It isn't welfare. People paid into that, expecting to get money back out of it. And if it survives, then 100% of the people who pay in get something back (unless they die before they reach retirement age, in which case their spouse and/or children get some of it).

Actually, it all depends on how you define "entitlements". Here's a pretty fascinating paper on the topic; I recommend skipping down to about p34 to look at the charts.

http://government.arts.cornell.edu/a...ler-022812.pdf

The point is that the "cut spending" crew has done a really good job of pretending that government social programs benefitting the wealthy are not entitlements, while those benefitting the poor are.

[AGDee]

I had to read the entire paper because I was struggling to understand their definition of "using a social program" and how they decided to define a social program. Is a student loan that is paid back with interest truly a government social program? If that loan would also be available from a private source if it was not offered by the government? Pell grants, yes, but student loans? I'm not convinced. They also used the words social policy in their hypothesis but used social program when questioning participants. There is a difference between those two terms, in my own head anyway.

I think the big thing is that when people talk about "cutting spending", that doesn't include "increasing revenue" as we've seen. Increasing revenue means increasing taxes and they don't want that. So the submerged items they discuss, such as pre-tax contributions for health care and retirement are not really "spending", they are ways that revenue is reduced. Additionally, you will pay taxes on that retirement money eventually. It is a deferred tax, not an eliminated tax.

When I think of "entitlements" or "social programs", I think of the government directly spending money to provide a service or necessities to people facing hardship. I don't think I'd include veteran benefits in that either because I see that as fringe benefits of that job... sort of like hazard pay combined with workman's comp for dangerous jobs in the private sector.

[PiKA2001]

Originally Posted by AGDee

I had to read the entire paper because I was struggling to understand their definition of "using a social program" and how they decided to define a social program. Is a student loan that is paid back with interest truly a government social program? If that loan would also be available from a private source if it was not offered by the government? Pell grants, yes, but student loans? I'm not convinced. They also used the words social policy in their hypothesis but used social program when questioning participants. There is a difference between those two terms, in my own head anyway.

I think the big thing is that when people talk about "cutting spending", that doesn't include "increasing revenue" as we've seen. Increasing revenue means increasing taxes and they don't want that. So the submerged items they discuss, such as pre-tax contributions for health care and retirement are not really "spending", they are ways that revenue is reduced. Additionally, you will pay taxes on that retirement money eventually. It is a deferred tax, not an eliminated tax.

When I think of "entitlements" or "social programs", I think of the government directly spending money to provide a service or necessities to people facing hardship. I don't think I'd include veteran benefits in that either because I see that as fringe benefits of that job... sort of like hazard pay combined with workman's comp for dangerous jobs in the private sector.

I'd also like to add that most of these "social programs" for the middle and upper class are actually designed to benefit the government in the long run in terms of spurring economic growth and generating higher tax revenues. It's very beneficial for the government to get people owning homes and paying property taxes as well as getting educations and earning higher taxable income than just minimum wage.

[AGDee]

Some of them they mention, such as the EITC and the child & dependent care tax credit are only allowable at lower income levels though, so I can more easily see those being defined as social programs. Then again, if a child care tax credit allows a woman to work instead of relying on welfare, then it is still a long term benefit to the government.

[DGTess]

Originally Posted by AGDee

Some of them they mention, such as the EITC and the child & dependent care tax credit are only allowable at lower income levels though, so I can more easily see those being defined as social programs. Then again, if a child care tax credit allows a woman to work instead of relying on welfare, then it is still a long term benefit to the government.

Why should we allow the government to benefit from our efforts? If it doesn't benefit the people, it should not exist in government.

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by DGTess

Why should we allow the government to benefit from our efforts? If it doesn't benefit the people, it should not exist in government.

Our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people, so I don't see a difference, frankly. However, I feel confident and comfortable with interchanging the word government with the word people in the sentence I wrote.

I honestly cannot think of a single instance offhand where any governmental agency or policy does not benefit the people. Is there a specific program or something in existence now that doesn't benefit the people? It seems like it would be really easy to make spending cuts if there were programs to cut that had no benefit. The reason people get wary of spending cuts is because they hurt people, usually the people who are already struggling.