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I'm seeing many things (if this data is accurate, which assuming it is as it's from all government sources) and trends that go against a large percentage of wha

I'm seeing many things (if this data is accurate, which assuming it is as it's from all government sources) and trends that go against a large percentage of what the media on both sides are perpetuating. That is my first takeaway at a glance. My second takeaway at a glance is the giant problem that is Social Security. It's been said over and over, and the aggregation of more data into charts comes to the same conclusion. The way Social Security works is not sustainable. Period. Something has to give. A $405 B shortfall on SS in 2015. If that was at least half, we would actually not be running a deficit. We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept. A quick third take away seems to be the unprecedented rise in non-cash government aid (food stamps) during the Obama administration. The data is there, needs more analyzing of course. Lastly, it seems that Government revenue for Federal and State/Local has actually increased pretty linearly with the population. Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Federal government collects about 15-17 % income tax. Including when the top rate was 90%+. As far as the presentation, my favorite part is each piece of government data is tied to 4 distinct duties of government outlined in the Constitution. That's pretty brilliant.

xienze 10y ago
> We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept. The problem is that there are a lot of people who believe that SS isn't broken because you can simply increase retirement age, make people pay in more, and other assorted band-aids. SS will be "solvent" until it suddenly isn't, and people need to realize that.
- bigtimeidiot 10y ago
  >SS will be "solvent" until it suddenly isn't, and people need to realize that. And with a stroke of the pen, they'll make adjustments. SS isn't a real debt obligation; it's merely a "promise".
- kzrdude 10y ago
  Retirement age must increase. People are living longer than when retirement pensions were first designed. It was easy to introduce, people weren't expected to live that long then and now they do.
  - ballenf 10y ago
    And it could be changed so gradually that no one near retirement age or who has started planning significantly for it is affected. Even a glacial rate of change would help -- one month later every year for the next few generations. And delay the start by a few years. Point is to make changes without giving any cohesive group a strong reason to organize opposition. Or to have a strong moral argument that it was promised them.
  - dota_fanatic 10y ago
    So (rich) people are living longer... does that mean they are as productive, longer? Just because they're alive longer doesn't mean they can work as well in their 70s as they used to. There's also the whole ageism thing to consider. How hard is it to get a job in your 60s. How about if you're 70? 75? The people with the lowest life expectancy are those that need SS the most, yet you're suggesting they not be able to receive it until after they're likely to be dead.
    - kzrdude 10y ago
      If you're thinking of America, it has homework to do first with SS (health care for all). I can see your perspective coming from there, I don't think it would be a viable argument in Europe.
  - geogra4 10y ago
    the cap MUST increase
  - dlp211 10y ago
    Living longer != able to work longer. Making SS solvent isn't a hard problem, we know how to do it. It is simply politically hard.
  - 10y ago
rqebmm 10y ago
> Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Federal government collects about 15-17 % income tax. Including when the top rate was 90%+. Even assuming that is true, it wouldn't change the regressive nature of a flat tax.
- Joeri 10y ago
  In practice a 20% flat tax on all people and corporations without exceptions and deductions would be more progressive than the current system. The wealthy pay very little taxes.
  - danielvf 10y ago
    In 2015, the top 20% paid 84% of collected income tax. That would hardly qualify as little taxes.
    - vkou 10y ago
      They also own 88% of the country's wealth. And collect 65% of the country's income. (More if you include investment gains.) Pardon me if I don't shed too many tears. [1] Increasing taxes on them would hardly qualify as hardship. The utility of a dollar is much lower when you have ~$300,000 in savings (80th percentile), then when you have ~$300 in savings (20th percentile). Related anecdote: With an annual income of ~$250-300,000, my net tax rate, including untaxable benefits and investment income is the same as that of my partner - who makes ~$30-40,000. If I had an income of $2,500,000, it would be substantially lower. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
  - xienze 10y ago
    A couple things... The parent is talking about "progressive" as in "the tax gets progressively higher as you make more money", not in the "social justice" sense. The flat tax being regressive means that the poor would have to actually pay more in taxes than they do now, which is very little. That's seen as a bad thing. Obviously there are solutions to that in flat tax proposals. Second, "the wealthy pay very little taxes" is a meme. I mean, look at what we've got here: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-americans-pay-most-income-taxes-but-enough-to-be-fair/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-... Those making $250K and up are responsible for 51.6% of all income tax revenue. How much more should they be expected to contribute? Remember: the truly wealthy can live anywhere in the world. There's a balancing act that needs to be established between "you're not paying your fair share" and "soak the rich."
shmageggy 10y ago
> Lastly, it seems that Government revenue for Federal and State/Local has actually increased pretty linearly with the population. Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Federal government collects about 15-17 % income tax. Including when the top rate was 90%+. This seems like a pretty poor argument for a flat tax and in fact could be seen as an argument against it. If raising top end bracket taxes didn't increase overall income, then it must be the case that it reduced the tax burden on lower incomes -- which is the entire point of progressive taxes. So progressive taxes work, let's keep them! I view this as mostly orthogonal to the issue of tax simplification, however, which I think is probably a good idea.
- Cshelton 10y ago
  I think you would have to look at the reasons why the government tax revenue did not increase when rates were higher. The rich are have mobility. They can move money around the world and at high tax rate levels, they'd be content on neither earning nor bringing back any of the money they make elsewhere. Let's take an example of Apple's $200 B sitting offshore. I know that's a corporate tax, but same principal. I don't believe the tax burden on the lower classes in the US has ever been lessened by increased rates at the top levels.
  - Tloewald 10y ago
    "I don't believe the tax burden on the lower classes in the US has ever been lessened by increased rates at the top levels." Every dollar of extra tax paid by the wealthy is a dollar of tax that doesn't need to be paid by the non-wealthy. Your belief notwithstanding.
    - Cshelton 10y ago
      You missed what I said. I said tax rates, not what was actually paid, as you stated. The people at the top have the ability to move. Or when the tax rates were 90%+ on the top brackets, those people simply reported they made $249,999 that year as they have the ability to find other places for their money. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. What I originally said is very different than how you understood it. Even in your case though, you assume government spending stays the same. But it doesn't. As government rev. increases, you can bet they will spend their new money as fast as they can. No matter if the additional revenue is coming from lower or upper brackets.
bigtimeidiot 10y ago
>We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept. Why is running a budget surplus necessarily a "good thing"? Seems like if people are willing to trade real assets for paper, we should do that as long as there are willing counterparties.
- tertius 10y ago
  > Seems like if people are willing to trade real assets for paper, we should do that as long as there are willing counterparties. That's why it's a good thing. Because we don't want to run out of "as long as."
- pacaro 10y ago
  Always running a surplus is presumably as bad a thing as always running a deficit, but if you can run a surplus On sunny days, then you don't need austerity measures on rainy days
  - TillE 10y ago
    Austerity measures are exactly the wrong strategy for "rainy days", no matter what your debts look like. See how the US bounced back fairly quickly from the 2008 crisis after the stimulus, while countries like the UK are still tightening their belts, because the cuts they've made to date have not had the desired effect.
pmarreck 10y ago
I searched for "social security" and found nothing meaningful. Or social-security-related. Search UI needs work, I guess
programbreeding 10y ago
>A quick third take away seems to be the unprecedented rise in non-cash government aid (food stamps) during the Obama administration. The data is there, needs more analyzing of course. I'm not sure you can say it like that. It went up 2.13x from 1980 to 1990, 1.43x from 1990 to 2000, 1.93x from 2000 to 2010, and 1.07x from 2010 to 2015. There was a big jump of 1.93x from 2000 to 2010, but that is only 2 years of Obama's first term. What really happened there is likely the housing crisis/market crash in 2008. I don't see how that's related to Obama. It only went up 1.07x (the lowest amount for each of the 10-year segments) for the remainder of his term, and it made a higher jump from 1980 to 1990.
- ariwilson 10y ago
  Are those numbers inflation adjusted?
  - programbreeding 10y ago
    They are not. I took them directly from USAFacts[0], and according to their methodologies[1], they have not adjusted for inflation either. [0] http://usafacts.org/government-finances/spending?comparison=by_years&government_type=federal&table=spending--by-mission&year=2014 http://usafacts.org/government-finances/spending?comparison=... [1] http://usafacts.org/methodology http://usafacts.org/methodology
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Wait, none of these graphs are in constant dollars? How are we meant to read them?
      - Cshelton 10y ago
        Some charts and graphs are inflation adjusted, others aren't. You have to find it for each one. And yes, some are in thousands, some in millions, and some are actual. On a large report like this with many different metrics, expecting them all to be scaled the same would make many hard to read.
wfunction 10y ago
> I'm seeing many things (if this data is accurate, which assuming it is as it's from all government sources) and trends that go against a large percentage of what the media on both sides are perpetuating. That is my first takeaway at a glance. Examples?
stdbrouw 10y ago
You spent five minutes looking at some charts and can now confidently state that (1) the media has got it all wrong and that (2) you've figured out how to avoid deficits, how taxes should really work and the problem with social security. The word "hubris" comes to mind.
- Cshelton 10y ago
  Ok, I'll bite... briefly. A.) I spent more than five minutes. Regardless, I stated at "at a glance". B.) I did not say the media has it all wrong. I said many things, NOT ALL, perpetuated by both sides in the media are different than the data from government sources. I don't think anybody would argue that both sides, especially recently, have had media reports that sketch and bend the truth. And both sides just claim the other is "fake news". C.) I never said I figured out how to avoid deficits. I stated a problem, which is running a deficit perpetually is not sustainable. I'd love to hear a solution if you have one. D.) For taxes, I once again stated an observation from the report, which supports the idea of a simplified tax system. No, I didn't lay out my full economic tax plan suggesting what to do. If you read one of the other comments, their is a link about historical effective tax rates, go check that out. That, along with the tax revenue by the federal government, is why I made my statement. And finally yeah, the problem with social security is many faceted. But from a selfish, personal reason... highly unlikely any of the money I'm paying in right now will EVER come back to me. So yeah, I believe it's a problem.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I don't even understand the argument you've made. From your original comment, it appears that you dove into a site full of graphs, came up with "405 billion shortfall", and declared the program imperiled. I can't find that number on the site (I may have spent less time looking than you did) and it doesn't square with the Trustees report or, for that matter, with the conventional wisdom that Social Security is probably not our big problem --- relatively small, long-overdue fixes to SSDI will more or less resolve budget concerns there --- but instead Medicare. Your comment at the top of this thread is sort of a perfect illustration of the problems of sites like these.
tunesmith 10y ago
I think this is a case of seeing what you want to see. According to the Trustees Report, SS is only in deficit if you don't factor in interest income. [1] It's projected to deplete its trust fund in 2034. Please resist the urge to argue that the trust fund doesn't exist. That 2034 date can easily be extended through minor tweaks, check out any of the ideas from the late Robert M. Ball. The flat tax is regressive. Regressive is bad because the value of money is roughly logarithmic as it increases. Any plans to make the flat tax "less regressive" is an argument against a flat tax. A simplified tax code is a good idea. It is quite possible to have a simpler tax code that is more progressive. Yet I find that flat tax proponents tend not to be in favor of that. [1] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/ https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
- schoen 10y ago
  > The flat tax is regressive. Strictly speaking, a flat tax is the border between progressive and regressive taxation and is neither progressive nor regressive.
  - abeyer 10y ago
    I think that's only true in a very academic sense. Ideally you would want to exclude the expenses incurred to sustain a reasonable minimum quality of life and only consider taxation on income in excess of that. A truly flat tax rate is still regressive in the sense that it is a significantly higher burden on that expendable income at the lower end of the scale.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      Even ignoring the disposal income question, it's regressive in utilitarian terms because money, like most commodities, has declining marginal utility, so taking 20% of $1,000,000 takes a lower percentage of the utility of that $1,000,000 than taking 20% of $100,000 does of the $100,000. (A lot of analysis gets based on the misuse of $ as a flat measure of utility, which is deeply flawed.) EDIT: more accurately, this subsumes and generalizes the disposable income issue, rather than ignoring it, since the concept of "necessities" that come out before income is "disposable" is really a simplification of the "low hanging fruit" of high-utility spending to a binary category, rather than a continuum.
tootie 10y ago
SS will exhaust it's trust fund at some point, but it still has lots of revenue eery year. Last projection I saw was that if we do nothing to payroll tax or retirement age, we'd see a 20% reduction in payouts and it would remain solvent indefinitely. Seems like it only needs adjustments to keep working fine.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > SS will exhaust it's trust fund at some point Or not. Current projection by the Social Security Trustees are that the OASI trust fund will be exhausted between, IIRC, 2030 and never; the DI fund between 2020 and never (there's two separate trust funds involved.)
clairity 10y ago
"My second takeaway at a glance is the giant problem that is Social Security. [...] A $405 B shortfall on SS in 2015. If that was at least half, we would actually not be running a deficit. We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ yes, the first step is to remove the cap on social security withholding, which would affect the top ~6%. that would take care of over $100B of that yearly deficit.
- tptacek 10y ago
  There's lots of simple things to do to address Social Security's budget, including modest raises in retirement age, means-testing benefits, and changing the way we collect FICA taxes (FICA is itself a flat tax, which is kind of silly, and the withholding cap is a travesty).
  - clairity 10y ago
    for sure. it's just that removing the cap is simple to understand and legislate, and is widely supported--around 80% of all americans. unfortunately that 80% doesn't include the majority of congress critters.
tgb29 10y ago
Tax all churches on donations and property assets and use these revenues to fund Social Security. The Constitution grants the Pope and his equivalents the freedom of religion; not the freedom to avoid taxes owed to the Federal Government.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
erikpukinskis 10y ago
I think there are players who expressly want the U.S. government not to have a surplus, due to the political connections/ramifictions/control debt can bring.
- hackuser 10y ago
  Yes. Look up 'Starve the Beast'.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  That's not only true now, it's been true all the way back to Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton (although the goals weren't entirely the same at that time, obviously).
dragontamer 10y ago
> My second takeaway at a glance is the giant problem that is Social Security. It's been said over and over, and the aggregation of more data into charts comes to the same conclusion. The way Social Security works is not sustainable. Period. Something has to give. A $405 B shortfall on SS in 2015. If that was at least half, we would actually not be running a deficit. We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept. We've literally spent the last 30 years building up the Social Security Trust Fund. We have just under $3 TRILLION saved up for the expected social security shortfall. People are living a bit longer than expected, so we're a bit short on money. But the USA has run a social security SURPLUS from between 1980 through 2014. Believe it or not, the US Government is actually very long-term thinking and we are somewhat prepared for the future. ------------ Yes, so thank Jimmy Carter in 1977 for coming up with the idea to save money for 2010+. The "Baby Boomers" are now retiring, so its natural for us to lose money until the Baby Boomers die out. The question is if the Trust Fund can last long enough (ie: until enough Boomers die)
Spooky23 10y ago
Social Security is perpetually misunderstood. It's working as designed. Those surpluses that you're looking for were essentially just dumped on the federal balance sheet as non-marketable debt and spent on stuff like building aircraft carriers. The "deficit" means that it's time to pay back those IOUs. It's pretty easily balance that -- you raise the threshold for payroll taxes and index it to inflation. Flat tax is an awful, terrible idea. The reason that the 90% tax rates resulted in similar collection rates is that lots of things were deductible. All leases, most interest expenses. More people were essentially exempt from paying as well.
- twoodfin 10y ago
  It's pretty easily balance that -- you raise the threshold for payroll taxes and index it to inflation. It's already indexed to wage growth rates, and there's nothing "easy" (or at least, shouldn't be) about a 12.4% marginal tax rate hike.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    It's easier than dealing with the blowback from slashing essential benefits from millions of seniors. My guess would be that the marginal dollar provided to a 30th percentile income individual has a higher economic impact than a loss of 0.12 of a marginal dollar for a person making $150k.

xienze 10y ago

> We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept. The problem is that there are a lot of people who believe that SS isn't broken because you can simply increase retirement age, make people pay in more, and other assorted band-aids. SS will be "solvent" until it suddenly isn't, and people need to realize that.

bigtimeidiot 10y ago
>SS will be "solvent" until it suddenly isn't, and people need to realize that. And with a stroke of the pen, they'll make adjustments. SS isn't a real debt obligation; it's merely a "promise".
kzrdude 10y ago
Retirement age must increase. People are living longer than when retirement pensions were first designed. It was easy to introduce, people weren't expected to live that long then and now they do.
- ballenf 10y ago
  And it could be changed so gradually that no one near retirement age or who has started planning significantly for it is affected. Even a glacial rate of change would help -- one month later every year for the next few generations. And delay the start by a few years. Point is to make changes without giving any cohesive group a strong reason to organize opposition. Or to have a strong moral argument that it was promised them.
- dota_fanatic 10y ago
  So (rich) people are living longer... does that mean they are as productive, longer? Just because they're alive longer doesn't mean they can work as well in their 70s as they used to. There's also the whole ageism thing to consider. How hard is it to get a job in your 60s. How about if you're 70? 75? The people with the lowest life expectancy are those that need SS the most, yet you're suggesting they not be able to receive it until after they're likely to be dead.
  - kzrdude 10y ago
    If you're thinking of America, it has homework to do first with SS (health care for all). I can see your perspective coming from there, I don't think it would be a viable argument in Europe.
- geogra4 10y ago
  the cap MUST increase
- dlp211 10y ago
  Living longer != able to work longer. Making SS solvent isn't a hard problem, we know how to do it. It is simply politically hard.
- 10y ago

rqebmm 10y ago

> Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Federal government collects about 15-17 % income tax. Including when the top rate was 90%+. Even assuming that is true, it wouldn't change the regressive nature of a flat tax.

Joeri 10y ago
In practice a 20% flat tax on all people and corporations without exceptions and deductions would be more progressive than the current system. The wealthy pay very little taxes.
- danielvf 10y ago
  In 2015, the top 20% paid 84% of collected income tax. That would hardly qualify as little taxes.
  - vkou 10y ago
    They also own 88% of the country's wealth. And collect 65% of the country's income. (More if you include investment gains.) Pardon me if I don't shed too many tears. [1] Increasing taxes on them would hardly qualify as hardship. The utility of a dollar is much lower when you have ~$300,000 in savings (80th percentile), then when you have ~$300 in savings (20th percentile). Related anecdote: With an annual income of ~$250-300,000, my net tax rate, including untaxable benefits and investment income is the same as that of my partner - who makes ~$30-40,000. If I had an income of $2,500,000, it would be substantially lower. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
- xienze 10y ago
  A couple things... The parent is talking about "progressive" as in "the tax gets progressively higher as you make more money", not in the "social justice" sense. The flat tax being regressive means that the poor would have to actually pay more in taxes than they do now, which is very little. That's seen as a bad thing. Obviously there are solutions to that in flat tax proposals. Second, "the wealthy pay very little taxes" is a meme. I mean, look at what we've got here: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-americans-pay-most-income-taxes-but-enough-to-be-fair/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-... Those making $250K and up are responsible for 51.6% of all income tax revenue. How much more should they be expected to contribute? Remember: the truly wealthy can live anywhere in the world. There's a balancing act that needs to be established between "you're not paying your fair share" and "soak the rich."

shmageggy 10y ago

> Lastly, it seems that Government revenue for Federal and State/Local has actually increased pretty linearly with the population. Despite all the different changes in the income tax rate/other progressive taxes. This supports an overhaul to the tax code to a more simple, flat tax system. From another data source outside this report, I'd have to find it, but historically, no matter the top bracket tax rate, the Federal government collects about 15-17 % income tax. Including when the top rate was 90%+. This seems like a pretty poor argument for a flat tax and in fact could be seen as an argument against it. If raising top end bracket taxes didn't increase overall income, then it must be the case that it reduced the tax burden on lower incomes -- which is the entire point of progressive taxes. So progressive taxes work, let's keep them! I view this as mostly orthogonal to the issue of tax simplification, however, which I think is probably a good idea.

Cshelton 10y ago
I think you would have to look at the reasons why the government tax revenue did not increase when rates were higher. The rich are have mobility. They can move money around the world and at high tax rate levels, they'd be content on neither earning nor bringing back any of the money they make elsewhere. Let's take an example of Apple's $200 B sitting offshore. I know that's a corporate tax, but same principal. I don't believe the tax burden on the lower classes in the US has ever been lessened by increased rates at the top levels.
- Tloewald 10y ago
  "I don't believe the tax burden on the lower classes in the US has ever been lessened by increased rates at the top levels." Every dollar of extra tax paid by the wealthy is a dollar of tax that doesn't need to be paid by the non-wealthy. Your belief notwithstanding.
  - Cshelton 10y ago
    You missed what I said. I said tax rates, not what was actually paid, as you stated. The people at the top have the ability to move. Or when the tax rates were 90%+ on the top brackets, those people simply reported they made $249,999 that year as they have the ability to find other places for their money. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. What I originally said is very different than how you understood it. Even in your case though, you assume government spending stays the same. But it doesn't. As government rev. increases, you can bet they will spend their new money as fast as they can. No matter if the additional revenue is coming from lower or upper brackets.

bigtimeidiot 10y ago

>We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept. Why is running a budget surplus necessarily a "good thing"? Seems like if people are willing to trade real assets for paper, we should do that as long as there are willing counterparties.

tertius 10y ago
> Seems like if people are willing to trade real assets for paper, we should do that as long as there are willing counterparties. That's why it's a good thing. Because we don't want to run out of "as long as."
pacaro 10y ago
Always running a surplus is presumably as bad a thing as always running a deficit, but if you can run a surplus On sunny days, then you don't need austerity measures on rainy days
- TillE 10y ago
  Austerity measures are exactly the wrong strategy for "rainy days", no matter what your debts look like. See how the US bounced back fairly quickly from the 2008 crisis after the stimulus, while countries like the UK are still tightening their belts, because the cuts they've made to date have not had the desired effect.

pmarreck 10y ago

I searched for "social security" and found nothing meaningful. Or social-security-related. Search UI needs work, I guess

programbreeding 10y ago

>A quick third take away seems to be the unprecedented rise in non-cash government aid (food stamps) during the Obama administration. The data is there, needs more analyzing of course. I'm not sure you can say it like that. It went up 2.13x from 1980 to 1990, 1.43x from 1990 to 2000, 1.93x from 2000 to 2010, and 1.07x from 2010 to 2015. There was a big jump of 1.93x from 2000 to 2010, but that is only 2 years of Obama's first term. What really happened there is likely the housing crisis/market crash in 2008. I don't see how that's related to Obama. It only went up 1.07x (the lowest amount for each of the 10-year segments) for the remainder of his term, and it made a higher jump from 1980 to 1990.

ariwilson 10y ago
Are those numbers inflation adjusted?
- programbreeding 10y ago
  They are not. I took them directly from USAFacts[0], and according to their methodologies[1], they have not adjusted for inflation either. [0] http://usafacts.org/government-finances/spending?comparison=by_years&government_type=federal&table=spending--by-mission&year=2014 http://usafacts.org/government-finances/spending?comparison=... [1] http://usafacts.org/methodology http://usafacts.org/methodology
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Wait, none of these graphs are in constant dollars? How are we meant to read them?
    - Cshelton 10y ago
      Some charts and graphs are inflation adjusted, others aren't. You have to find it for each one. And yes, some are in thousands, some in millions, and some are actual. On a large report like this with many different metrics, expecting them all to be scaled the same would make many hard to read.

wfunction 10y ago

> I'm seeing many things (if this data is accurate, which assuming it is as it's from all government sources) and trends that go against a large percentage of what the media on both sides are perpetuating. That is my first takeaway at a glance. Examples?

stdbrouw 10y ago

You spent five minutes looking at some charts and can now confidently state that (1) the media has got it all wrong and that (2) you've figured out how to avoid deficits, how taxes should really work and the problem with social security. The word "hubris" comes to mind.

Cshelton 10y ago
Ok, I'll bite... briefly. A.) I spent more than five minutes. Regardless, I stated at "at a glance". B.) I did not say the media has it all wrong. I said many things, NOT ALL, perpetuated by both sides in the media are different than the data from government sources. I don't think anybody would argue that both sides, especially recently, have had media reports that sketch and bend the truth. And both sides just claim the other is "fake news". C.) I never said I figured out how to avoid deficits. I stated a problem, which is running a deficit perpetually is not sustainable. I'd love to hear a solution if you have one. D.) For taxes, I once again stated an observation from the report, which supports the idea of a simplified tax system. No, I didn't lay out my full economic tax plan suggesting what to do. If you read one of the other comments, their is a link about historical effective tax rates, go check that out. That, along with the tax revenue by the federal government, is why I made my statement. And finally yeah, the problem with social security is many faceted. But from a selfish, personal reason... highly unlikely any of the money I'm paying in right now will EVER come back to me. So yeah, I believe it's a problem.
- tptacek 10y ago
  I don't even understand the argument you've made. From your original comment, it appears that you dove into a site full of graphs, came up with "405 billion shortfall", and declared the program imperiled. I can't find that number on the site (I may have spent less time looking than you did) and it doesn't square with the Trustees report or, for that matter, with the conventional wisdom that Social Security is probably not our big problem --- relatively small, long-overdue fixes to SSDI will more or less resolve budget concerns there --- but instead Medicare. Your comment at the top of this thread is sort of a perfect illustration of the problems of sites like these.

tunesmith 10y ago

I think this is a case of seeing what you want to see. According to the Trustees Report, SS is only in deficit if you don't factor in interest income. [1] It's projected to deplete its trust fund in 2034. Please resist the urge to argue that the trust fund doesn't exist. That 2034 date can easily be extended through minor tweaks, check out any of the ideas from the late Robert M. Ball. The flat tax is regressive. Regressive is bad because the value of money is roughly logarithmic as it increases. Any plans to make the flat tax "less regressive" is an argument against a flat tax. A simplified tax code is a good idea. It is quite possible to have a simpler tax code that is more progressive. Yet I find that flat tax proponents tend not to be in favor of that. [1] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/ https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/

schoen 10y ago
> The flat tax is regressive. Strictly speaking, a flat tax is the border between progressive and regressive taxation and is neither progressive nor regressive.
- abeyer 10y ago
  I think that's only true in a very academic sense. Ideally you would want to exclude the expenses incurred to sustain a reasonable minimum quality of life and only consider taxation on income in excess of that. A truly flat tax rate is still regressive in the sense that it is a significantly higher burden on that expendable income at the lower end of the scale.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Even ignoring the disposal income question, it's regressive in utilitarian terms because money, like most commodities, has declining marginal utility, so taking 20% of $1,000,000 takes a lower percentage of the utility of that $1,000,000 than taking 20% of $100,000 does of the $100,000. (A lot of analysis gets based on the misuse of $ as a flat measure of utility, which is deeply flawed.) EDIT: more accurately, this subsumes and generalizes the disposable income issue, rather than ignoring it, since the concept of "necessities" that come out before income is "disposable" is really a simplification of the "low hanging fruit" of high-utility spending to a binary category, rather than a continuum.

tootie 10y ago

SS will exhaust it's trust fund at some point, but it still has lots of revenue eery year. Last projection I saw was that if we do nothing to payroll tax or retirement age, we'd see a 20% reduction in payouts and it would remain solvent indefinitely. Seems like it only needs adjustments to keep working fine.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> SS will exhaust it's trust fund at some point Or not. Current projection by the Social Security Trustees are that the OASI trust fund will be exhausted between, IIRC, 2030 and never; the DI fund between 2020 and never (there's two separate trust funds involved.)

clairity 10y ago

"My second takeaway at a glance is the giant problem that is Social Security. [...] A $405 B shortfall on SS in 2015. If that was at least half, we would actually not be running a deficit. We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ yes, the first step is to remove the cap on social security withholding, which would affect the top ~6%. that would take care of over $100B of that yearly deficit.

tptacek 10y ago
There's lots of simple things to do to address Social Security's budget, including modest raises in retirement age, means-testing benefits, and changing the way we collect FICA taxes (FICA is itself a flat tax, which is kind of silly, and the withholding cap is a travesty).
- clairity 10y ago
  for sure. it's just that removing the cap is simple to understand and legislate, and is widely supported--around 80% of all americans. unfortunately that 80% doesn't include the majority of congress critters.

tgb29 10y ago

Tax all churches on donations and property assets and use these revenues to fund Social Security. The Constitution grants the Pope and his equivalents the freedom of religion; not the freedom to avoid taxes owed to the Federal Government.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

erikpukinskis 10y ago

I think there are players who expressly want the U.S. government not to have a surplus, due to the political connections/ramifictions/control debt can bring.

hackuser 10y ago
Yes. Look up 'Starve the Beast'.
emodendroket 10y ago
That's not only true now, it's been true all the way back to Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton (although the goals weren't entirely the same at that time, obviously).

dragontamer 10y ago

> My second takeaway at a glance is the giant problem that is Social Security. It's been said over and over, and the aggregation of more data into charts comes to the same conclusion. The way Social Security works is not sustainable. Period. Something has to give. A $405 B shortfall on SS in 2015. If that was at least half, we would actually not be running a deficit. We would have a budget surplus if we actually made Social Security/other Gov. retirement program replacement actually sustain itself perpetually. What. A. Concept. We've literally spent the last 30 years building up the Social Security Trust Fund. We have just under $3 TRILLION saved up for the expected social security shortfall. People are living a bit longer than expected, so we're a bit short on money. But the USA has run a social security SURPLUS from between 1980 through 2014. Believe it or not, the US Government is actually very long-term thinking and we are somewhat prepared for the future. ------------ Yes, so thank Jimmy Carter in 1977 for coming up with the idea to save money for 2010+. The "Baby Boomers" are now retiring, so its natural for us to lose money until the Baby Boomers die out. The question is if the Trust Fund can last long enough (ie: until enough Boomers die)

Spooky23 10y ago

Social Security is perpetually misunderstood. It's working as designed. Those surpluses that you're looking for were essentially just dumped on the federal balance sheet as non-marketable debt and spent on stuff like building aircraft carriers. The "deficit" means that it's time to pay back those IOUs. It's pretty easily balance that -- you raise the threshold for payroll taxes and index it to inflation. Flat tax is an awful, terrible idea. The reason that the 90% tax rates resulted in similar collection rates is that lots of things were deductible. All leases, most interest expenses. More people were essentially exempt from paying as well.

twoodfin 10y ago
It's pretty easily balance that -- you raise the threshold for payroll taxes and index it to inflation. It's already indexed to wage growth rates, and there's nothing "easy" (or at least, shouldn't be) about a 12.4% marginal tax rate hike.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  It's easier than dealing with the blowback from slashing essential benefits from millions of seniors. My guess would be that the marginal dollar provided to a 30th percentile income individual has a higher economic impact than a loss of 0.12 of a marginal dollar for a person making $150k.