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Overal taxation in the U.S. is low compared to other OECD countries [1]. We, as a nation, decided that low taxes was the goal. As a result infrastructure is p

by sykhic 8y ago

Overal taxation in the U.S. is low compared to other OECD countries [1]. We, as a nation, decided that low taxes was the goal. As a result infrastructure is poor, toll roads are increasing, privatization of prisons, intelligence gathering, war, etc. are rising too. Yet Americans falsely believe they are overtaxed. The situation is easy to fix in economic terms but not in political terms. The road to an Ayn Randian paradise in which everyone fends for themselves will lead us to ruin. Corporations have largely shunted the responsibility for retirement savings onto individual workers. Now said workers have no pensions and have uncertain retirements. Instead of asking why they have no pensions they seek to equalize status by falsely believing we can't afford any sort of pension. As a nation we need to seriously rethink the role and purpose of government and how taxation is a part of the proper functioning of government. [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-compare-internationally https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxe...

agumonkey 8y ago
is ayn rand a real influence ? i've seen one interview of her and I can't read her name without being filled with negative emotions. such a free-market fanatic.
- sp332 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand#Political_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand#Political_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Influence_and_legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Influence_and_l... Edit: She did flee a terrible situation in Russia, which I think probably explains (but does not excuse) her positions on socialism vs. capitalism.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    coming from russia I understand her 'love' for free market
dunpeal 8y ago
> As a result infrastructure is poor, toll roads are increasing, privatization of prisons, intelligence gathering, war, etc. are rising too. I wouldn't bundle military expenditure with the rest of public spending. Our military budget currently stands at a staggering $639bn (that's billion) for FY2019. In fact, there's a good argument that if we diverted some of these enormous funds to invest in other areas, those problems you mentioned (infrastructure, etc) would be fixed. > The situation is easy to fix in economic terms but not in political terms. The article is about defined-benefit pensions. Nobody has those anymore, not in the US. This is a large group of privileged individuals, who years ago got themselves a sweetheart deal as employees of the state. It's basically another case of the previous generation mandating extremely comfortable benefits for themselves, and passing the bill to the next generation. These are people who worked for the government their entire lives. They may not be rich, but they were generally comfortable, and certainly not the neediest part of the population. They can stand a modest cut to their pensions. Otherwise, your argument is that all of us should pay substantially higher taxes to bankroll these lucky few individuals who got themselves a sweetheart deal thanks to their affiliation with state and local government. In most places, you'd call that "corruption".
- adventured 8y ago
  You could fix infrastructure by slashing the US military down to a reasonable size (~2.5% of GDP), there are no other large problems you can fix with that money. The scale of the entitlement problem, healthcare cost problem, etc. is far beyond anything that $150b-$200b per year will solve long-term. I have no interest in seeing Chicago fix its pension problems by using funding taken from the US military. Chicago made its bed by intentionally, dramatically over-promising, it gets to sleep in that bed. National high speed rail? That would get my vote, so to speak. We could throw some money at the university cost problem. However that's not lacking funding at all. In fact it has far too much funding, we need to deprive it of the federal slush money and legally mandate how funds can be spent (ie restrict admin spending). It's a massive theft cartel run by the admins at the universities, they're the ones that have universally benefitted by perpetually raising the cost. You can see that represented in the charts comparing the extreme expansion of admin cost & employment at universities, vs the employment of eg professors, over 30 years.
gok 8y ago
That is not the issue this article is talking about. Public pension spending in the US is not especially low compared to the rest of the OECD [1]; as a portion of GDP it's larger than Norway or the Netherlands, which have much higher taxes. The issue is that those pensions have been comically mismanaged; edit: and were not sustainable in the first place [1] https://data.oecd.org/socialexp/pension-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/socialexp/pension-spending.htm
- dunpeal 8y ago
  Defined-benefit pensions are economically bankrupt when lifespan keeps increasing. This has been known for decades[1] and is the reason why none of us reading this have a DB pension, except those lucky few state employees who got a sweetheart deal all those years ago. Of course, the fact these pensions were managed by state government (read: mismanaged) only accelerated the inevitable crisis. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/10/demise-defined-benefit-plan.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/10/demise-d...
  - gok 8y ago
    These plans wouldn't have worked even if lifespans remained the same. Indeed, US life expectancy is actually down recently.
ythn 8y ago
> Yet Americans falsely believe they are overtaxed. Perhaps the observation of government wastefulness is conflated with feeling overtaxed. There are two ways the government can raise more money: 1) Raise taxes 2) Use existing taxes more efficiently If you look at where the tax money is going, infrastructure is one of the smallest pieces of the pie. Why not divert defense and/or social service tax to infrastructure for a few years?
kevmo 8y ago
50 years of Cold War propaganda exacted its price. Communism, socialism, and taxes are trigger words for a large number of Americans aged 40 and over. One thing I really appreciated about Bernie Sanders was that he did not shy away from the term "socialist". It's engendered a conversation America really needed to start having.
anilshanbhag 8y ago
Taxes being lower or higher are not what determine size of pension hole. Greece and Italy have higher taxes and still have a pretty big pension hole. The problem is public sector employees are promised pensions higher than county/city can afford. Unlike a corporation which has to balance its budget, city officials go beyond means with their promises in order to get elected and leave the problem for the next set. This is one of the main reasons why many in this country prefer a small government vs big.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  > The problem is public sector employees are promised pensions higher than county/city can afford. Precisely. But in fact, it's worse: The people doing the promising and those receiving the benefits are in fact the same. Who makes the promises? Local and state government employees. Who receives the benefits? Local and state government employees. Who pays for them? Us ordinary taxpayers who can only dream of such sweet defined-benefit pension deals. Yet some folks see this as reason we should pay even higher taxes, and sacrifice our own pensions, which are already lower and less secure than these privileged government pensioners. Unbelievable.
  - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
    The people doing the promising are the same as those receiving the benefits. That's the key point. Budget broken so we can't pay for something? Let's talk about putting money in. Systemic problem where the people making decisions about spending the money are the same people receiving benefits? You can't write a check to fix that. This isn't a traditional "how much do we tax and what do we spend our money on?" public policy discussion. Systemic problems are another kind of problem entirely. They deserve and require non-partisan attention and discussion.
    - dunpeal 8y ago
      Indeed. Also notice that some of the worst problems are in locations that already have very high local and state taxes, such as California. There's simply no reason to believe that throwing more money at these systemic problems will fix them. In fact, it may well exacerbate them instead.
ars 8y ago
I didn't realize US taxes were so high in comparison to other countries. You are looking at the wrong table. Look at the next table instead and see just how high the US is relative to other countries. The only thing we don't tax is goods, but that's to help lower income people - the same people you want to help.
- sykhic 8y ago
  The next table (the one below, right?) shows only the relative percent of where taxes come from. It does not describe tax rates. It merely states that around 50% of U.S. tax revenue come from taxing income and profits. This is not the tax rate on that source.
  - ars 8y ago
    > The next table (the one below, right?) Yes. > shows only the relative percent of where taxes come from. It does not describe tax rates. I know. But if the US is to raise rates they would raise them on Goods and Services, not on income because the tax is already very heavily skewed toward income. And regardless of that, the breakdown alone shows that the US tax code is more progressive than other countries.
- rayiner 8y ago
  You raise the other really important consideration, which is that if we were to raise taxes to the same levels as Germany or Sweden, taxes wouldn't go up on rich people and corporations: https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-their-government-spending https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-the.... The top marginal tax rate for someone in California, even with the Trump tax cuts, is similar to someone in Sweden. The difference is that in the U.S., the 50%+ rate kicks in around $500,000-1,000,000 HHI, while in Sweden it kicks in at the equivalent of around $100,000 HHI. Sweden collects as much revenue from its 25% VAT, which is enormously regressive, as from income taxes.
  - adventured 8y ago
    The US middle class is entirely oblivious to how extraordinarily low its taxes are. Despite having one of the highest disposable income levels on earth, it somehow manages to blow all of its money on consumer crap from China, $300/month cell phone plans, $200 DirecTV plans, etc., instead of saving it. That's despite the US having a lower cost of living than Germany and France. All the right politicians bleat about lowering taxes - you really can't, the rich are already paying for everything as it is now, we can hardly get more progressive (on income taxes at least). You can't lower taxes on the bottom 75%, it's just pandering. The left bleats about the well-off not paying their fair share, somehow paying for nearly everything isn't a fair share. They're both wrong as usual. More plausibly, to pay for ballooning entitlement costs, infrastructure, expanding healthcare, etc. taxes need to go up on everyone.
rayiner 8y ago
> Instead of asking why they have no pensions they seek to equalize status by falsely believing we can't afford any sort of pension. More accurately: we can't afford the pensions we've promised with the taxes we're willing to pay. It's not a normative argument but a descriptive one. And within the American free market, there is little incentive for people to pay more taxes to close that gap. Why pay more taxes to Illinois--and not get any increased public services from those taxes, because the money is going to people who have already retired--when you can move to Tennessee or Texas and pay less?
- sykhic 8y ago
  I believe at some point in time California and other wealthy states will want to secede. They are subsidizing the poorer states and at some point they may question the benefits of the union.
  - harryh 8y ago
    California would have a HUGE water problem if they left the US. That alone is pretty much a deal breaker.
    - sykhic 8y ago
      Countries do make agreeements on water usage. Even countries that don't like each other. Like Pakistan and India.
kodablah 8y ago
I'm always dismayed here and elsewhere to see everyone assuming that collection is the problem, not the dispensing and management. If someone proves incapable of proper budgeting, surely it is foolish to want them to have more money? Always sad that it's everyone but the policy and budget makers being blamed for the failures of policy and budget making. You can argue an honest politician can't survive, but you shouldn't shift blame. It seems like some feel it's a catch 22, that citizens don't want to pay for things yet they want things. But in reality, those clamoring for the improvements and government assistance are rarely those that don't want to pay and/or recognize government fallacies wrt spending. If you want to tackle the problems, you need to first be honest with where they lie...and not having enough money is not where the problems lie.
- rayiner 8y ago
  As someone who supports higher taxation, I've come around to the idea that liberals and conservatives are largely talking past each other on this point. Yes, our taxes are too low (if we want to have the kind of welfare state Sweden or Germany have). Yes, our public sector is particularly inefficient, compared to Sweden or Germany (or France or Canada). In my experience your average voter who opposes higher taxes isn't a Randian. Rather, they feel like they're not getting enough in return for what they pay in taxes. (And when you look at data about how we spend more to get less in education, transit, etc., turns out they're right!)
  - kodablah 8y ago
    > our taxes are too low [...] our public sector is particularly inefficient Right. You cannot begin fixing the first problem in a democracy until you begin fixing the second. The solutions cannot happen in parallel either. So we either need to better prioritize our complaints or accept that attempts to fix the first problem is often just flushing people's money that they may need. Perfection is not a requirement, just some level of mediocrity could be enough to restore some trust.
- sykhic 8y ago
  I agree that it's largely a crisis of leadership. Both major parties are to blame. Kicking the can down the road, so to speak, has proved politically rewarding. I think that we, as a people, need to stop thinking that taxation is inherently bad. Taxation with incompetent governance is inherently bad. Taxation with little in return is bad. But taxation itself is not bad. Nor are we overtaxed in absolute terms. We are overtaxed in terms of return from government. I certainly don't advocate throwing money at the situation. I advocate that as a nation we take a step back on reassess what our views on government are. We've largely bought into the false beliefs that government is always incompetent, government regulation is inherently bad, and taxation is bad. I don't see how to get out of the mess we are in. These are structural problems in the nation and I think secession is going to occur in the next 50 years or so.
Shivetya 8y ago
Public sector pensions are deficits and eventual bankruptcy are the result of greed and politics and not taxation. chicago is a poster child for the corruption that has created a system which will bankrupt in three years [1]. It was never sustainable but its continued expansion kept politicians in office. just look at the numbers in the story I linked, what reasonable group of people would have ever signed off on this? Chicago isn't alone. Its rampant. six figure retirements? no public service job warrants that. and it isn't just the public sector employees, there are story after story of city bureaucrats making a quarter million or more and that is just up front money. simply put, they control the piggy bank and they are willing to loot it for gains today because they don't plan to be in office when the bill comes due [1] https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/511130434-projection-chicago-s-police-pension-fund-will-be-broke-in-2021 https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/511130434-projection-chi...
ThomPete 8y ago
Taxes are pretty high in the US for the upper middle class especially. IMO corporations should be taxed in a way that the more they make with fewer people the more they get taxed relative to other companies who make the same but have more people. Productivity in the age of digitalization is not what it used to be and I don't think it's a good way to measure anymore as we have way more supply than we have demand. Today it's more about technology leverage.
- ThomPete 8y ago
  Would love to hear why some disagree with this. (two downvotes) what am I missing?
jwess 8y ago
Perhaps people feel overtaxed, not in absolute terms, but relative to the services provided? The US Gov collected approximately 3.3T in revenue in FY2016--more than $10,000 for every person in the country. By comparison, the Netherlands collected 255B Euros from a population of 17M, or about $17k USD per person (2016 figure, according to OECD statistics). Clearly, a much higher number at the federal level, but they have a much lower average provincial tax (~$1,500) compared to the average state tax in the US, which varies widely, but averages out to about $4,800, bringing the totals to ~$14,800/person in the US, vs ~$18,500 in the Netherlands. Yes, the Dutch pay a 25% premium, but in my opinion they get a good ROI for their tax dollars. I think the issue of ROI is a major barrier to increasing tax rates in the US.
- sykhic 8y ago
  Yes, clearly the return on services and government investment is quite poor in the U.S. It's a situation in which people reasonably believe that paying more in taxes is throwing money at the problem. This is especially so when one of the major parties actively seeks to prove that government is incompetent.
- adventured 8y ago
  A great comment. Usually the US state taxation is ignored when making comparisons. You need to go further however, as the vast budget deficit is ultimately an inflationary tax on the US people (we'll follow the Japan scenario, and debase the dollar to deal with it over time, hammering the standard of living). You can see that represented by the dramatic damage to the US dollar during the Bush deficit years, which simultaneously sent the dollar plunging, commodities soaring and all other nation GDP figures soaring (when priced in dollars). Total spending is about $7.1 trillion, between Federal + State + Local. What kind of return are Americans getting for their $22,000(!) per year? An absolutely horrendous return, that's what. The US state + local spending is like an entire extra Federal Government stapled on. I'm not concerned with slashing spending as some are, I'm overwhelmingly concerned about using that spending effectively instead. There's vast progress to be had in focusing just on that.
jakecrouch 8y ago
Raising taxes is not the only way to improve public infrastructure. One can also lower the trade deficits, improve the technology the government uses, and legislate away some of the problems (jails would be less full if drug offenses didn't carry such harsh penalties). Taxation should only be tried when nothing else has worked. With 50% marginal income tax rates in many states, the US leans much more towards the communist than Randian side of the spectrum as it is.
tiatia123 8y ago
"The road to an Ayn Randian paradise in which everyone fends for themselves will lead us to ruin." Possibly. But having fend all for myself just to stay alive, I don't feel the need to fend for others. But go ahead. You have my blessings. My blessings but not my money!
milesvp 8y ago
I'm not sure how much I trust these tax rates. My understanding was that government spending is roughly 33% of GDP here in the US. This was true when I was in undergrad, and it looks to be roughly correct today. https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/percent_gdp https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/percent_gdp (not sure how much I trust this site, but it corroborates what I learned in undergrad with only a few minutes of googling). This means that the tax rate must be close to 33%. Else you'd have amazing deficits balooning quite quickly. Maybe it's ignoring corporate taxes? or ignoring other things on our W-2, like L&I and social security/medicare? It 's also probably ignoring local taxes, a 10% sales tax is hard to ignore. I once calculated my effective marginal tax rate at 45%, and it stopped me from pursuing a higher paying job, since my take home didn't change enough to be worth the higher stress and the money I'd have to spend to combat said stress.
- sykhic 8y ago
  We do have massive deficits.
- greedo 8y ago
  Federal marginal tax rates for 2018 are capped at 37% if you make $500K ($600K for a couple). If you're hitting that plus 8% for state, then I don't have too much sympathy. And that's a marginal rate, not an effective rate (which it seems you're conflating). If you earned $500k, and were single/no deps, and just took the standard $12K deduction, your Federal tax would be 29% ($145K). I can't imagine someone with that income not having more deductions or IRA/401 contributions that would minimize the tax burden, but I suppose there's always someone out there completely clueless.
gred 8y ago
> Corporations have largely shunted the responsibility for retirement savings onto individual workers. Now said workers have no pensions and have uncertain retirements. Instead of asking why they have no pensions they seek to equalize status by falsely believing we can't afford any sort of pension. Aren't you ignoring Social Security? For example, average Social Security monthly payments appear to be around $1400/month [1]. Spain, as an example of a high-tax, cradle-to-grave care system, provides pensions that appear to average a little under 800 euros/month ($940/month) [2]. And that's ignoring all of the Roth and 401(k) extras available out there. Am I missing something? [1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102814/what-maximum-i-can-receive-my-social-security-retirement-benefit.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102814/what-maximum... [2] https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/3287811/0/cuanto-cobra-media-pensionista-espana/ https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/3287811/0/cuanto-cobra-medi...
mistermann 8y ago
> The road to an Ayn Randian paradise in which everyone fends for themselves will lead us to ruin. It always depresses me to read comments like this. Rand's central themes were about corrupt relationships between pseudo-capitalists and government, the immorality of a desire for the unearned, and the consequences of what will happen to a society that can't be bothered to concern themselves with ethics. Well, one of these days these chickens are going to come home to roost, and instead of people hanging their heads in shame and regret because they ignored her supremely confident warnings, instead they're going to charge her with the crime. The irony. "The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash - that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value." As a cherry on top, while there's still time to recover from mistakes of the past (there is a great deal of ruin in a nation, as they say), rather than eating a little humble pie, listening for a change to those who said "I told you so", and getting our affairs in order, we will actually choose to blaze straight ahead at full throttle on the exact same trajectory. And in the end, we'll end up selling off infrastructure, piecemeal, for pennies on the dollar, some to the very criminals we were warned about, and the rest to other nations who were smart enough to crack a book.
- sykhic 8y ago
  I use Any Randian to describe those who publicly cite her and they tend to have a certain political philosophy that is best described by me as, "I've got mine, fuck you." I'm not critiquing her personally or her philosophy. It's sort of like Ghandi's famous quote on Christianity. He said, "Your Jesus I like. Your Christians, I do not."
  - mistermann 8y ago
    > I use Any Randian to describe those who publicly cite her and they tend to have a certain political philosophy that is best described by me as, "I've got mine, fuck you." a) Do you think it is responsible to be opaque on whom you are attributing the belief to, particularly considering the topic of conversation and the fact that her warnings on the matter were clear? b) These people you cite, are they Ayn Rand supporters, or critics who "think", despite no actual evidence beyond 4th hand also-uneducated opinions, that Rand's philosophy was anything remotely resembling "I've got mine, fuck you." Here's a fun experiment: try to google up a statement by an actual Objectivism supporter that supports anything near that sentiment, and observe how many false hits you get of the latter in your search. > I'm not critiquing her personally or her philosophy. Of those HN'ers who hold an opinion on Rand, you belong to a very exclusive club in my experience. Regardless, your sentiment now being explicit is good enough for me, thanks for straightening it out.
ghein 8y ago
There are political choices behind the decline in infrastructure. It costs NYC $2.1B per mile to build the Second Ave subway while in Europe it costs $200-500M per mile. There's California High Speed Rail, and then there's just the cost to build a condo in San Francisco (see the "historic" laundromat in The Mission). You have interlocking legislation, many reasons and opportunities to sue, esoteric work rules. Regardless of the validity of each element the structure as a whole is patently absurd and abhorrent. Then you have government spending. A university does not need much beyond some blackboards and some professors to teach most everything from Philosophy to French to Advanced Data Structures to Topology. Certain PhDs need more equipment but essentially all the expensive equipment should be paid for by research grants or contracts. Over the past decades more and more classes are taught by adjuncts at Starbucks level wages. Meanwhile the percentage of staff and spending on administrative functions has climbed dramatically. Adjusting for inflation, from 1947 to 1995, overall university spending increased 148 percent. Administrative spending, though, increased by a whopping 235 percent. Instructional spending, by contrast, increased only 128 percent, 20 points less than the overall rate of spending increase. Obama promised to invest in "shovel ready jobs". There was a backlash because so much money was being spent on construction and thus, due to the current makeup of construction workers, the vast majority of money would go to men. Spending was adjusted to include other projects so that the gender balance of spending would be more palatable. So to get $1 in new infrastructure spending you need an additional $1 in net new other government services. Or possibly much more than $1, depending on the various worker populations. This in an environment where you're getting only 25% to 10% of your initial money's worth. So $1 in net new infrastructure costs $20 or more.

by sykhic 8y ago

agumonkey 8y ago

is ayn rand a real influence ? i've seen one interview of her and I can't read her name without being filled with negative emotions. such a free-market fanatic.

sp332 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand#Political_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand#Political_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Influence_and_legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Influence_and_l... Edit: She did flee a terrible situation in Russia, which I think probably explains (but does not excuse) her positions on socialism vs. capitalism.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  coming from russia I understand her 'love' for free market

dunpeal 8y ago

> As a result infrastructure is poor, toll roads are increasing, privatization of prisons, intelligence gathering, war, etc. are rising too. I wouldn't bundle military expenditure with the rest of public spending. Our military budget currently stands at a staggering $639bn (that's billion) for FY2019. In fact, there's a good argument that if we diverted some of these enormous funds to invest in other areas, those problems you mentioned (infrastructure, etc) would be fixed. > The situation is easy to fix in economic terms but not in political terms. The article is about defined-benefit pensions. Nobody has those anymore, not in the US. This is a large group of privileged individuals, who years ago got themselves a sweetheart deal as employees of the state. It's basically another case of the previous generation mandating extremely comfortable benefits for themselves, and passing the bill to the next generation. These are people who worked for the government their entire lives. They may not be rich, but they were generally comfortable, and certainly not the neediest part of the population. They can stand a modest cut to their pensions. Otherwise, your argument is that all of us should pay substantially higher taxes to bankroll these lucky few individuals who got themselves a sweetheart deal thanks to their affiliation with state and local government. In most places, you'd call that "corruption".

adventured 8y ago
You could fix infrastructure by slashing the US military down to a reasonable size (~2.5% of GDP), there are no other large problems you can fix with that money. The scale of the entitlement problem, healthcare cost problem, etc. is far beyond anything that $150b-$200b per year will solve long-term. I have no interest in seeing Chicago fix its pension problems by using funding taken from the US military. Chicago made its bed by intentionally, dramatically over-promising, it gets to sleep in that bed. National high speed rail? That would get my vote, so to speak. We could throw some money at the university cost problem. However that's not lacking funding at all. In fact it has far too much funding, we need to deprive it of the federal slush money and legally mandate how funds can be spent (ie restrict admin spending). It's a massive theft cartel run by the admins at the universities, they're the ones that have universally benefitted by perpetually raising the cost. You can see that represented in the charts comparing the extreme expansion of admin cost & employment at universities, vs the employment of eg professors, over 30 years.

gok 8y ago

That is not the issue this article is talking about. Public pension spending in the US is not especially low compared to the rest of the OECD [1]; as a portion of GDP it's larger than Norway or the Netherlands, which have much higher taxes. The issue is that those pensions have been comically mismanaged; edit: and were not sustainable in the first place [1] https://data.oecd.org/socialexp/pension-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/socialexp/pension-spending.htm

dunpeal 8y ago
Defined-benefit pensions are economically bankrupt when lifespan keeps increasing. This has been known for decades[1] and is the reason why none of us reading this have a DB pension, except those lucky few state employees who got a sweetheart deal all those years ago. Of course, the fact these pensions were managed by state government (read: mismanaged) only accelerated the inevitable crisis. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/10/demise-defined-benefit-plan.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/10/demise-d...
- gok 8y ago
  These plans wouldn't have worked even if lifespans remained the same. Indeed, US life expectancy is actually down recently.

ythn 8y ago

> Yet Americans falsely believe they are overtaxed. Perhaps the observation of government wastefulness is conflated with feeling overtaxed. There are two ways the government can raise more money: 1) Raise taxes 2) Use existing taxes more efficiently If you look at where the tax money is going, infrastructure is one of the smallest pieces of the pie. Why not divert defense and/or social service tax to infrastructure for a few years?

kevmo 8y ago

50 years of Cold War propaganda exacted its price. Communism, socialism, and taxes are trigger words for a large number of Americans aged 40 and over. One thing I really appreciated about Bernie Sanders was that he did not shy away from the term "socialist". It's engendered a conversation America really needed to start having.

anilshanbhag 8y ago

Taxes being lower or higher are not what determine size of pension hole. Greece and Italy have higher taxes and still have a pretty big pension hole. The problem is public sector employees are promised pensions higher than county/city can afford. Unlike a corporation which has to balance its budget, city officials go beyond means with their promises in order to get elected and leave the problem for the next set. This is one of the main reasons why many in this country prefer a small government vs big.

dunpeal 8y ago
> The problem is public sector employees are promised pensions higher than county/city can afford. Precisely. But in fact, it's worse: The people doing the promising and those receiving the benefits are in fact the same. Who makes the promises? Local and state government employees. Who receives the benefits? Local and state government employees. Who pays for them? Us ordinary taxpayers who can only dream of such sweet defined-benefit pension deals. Yet some folks see this as reason we should pay even higher taxes, and sacrifice our own pensions, which are already lower and less secure than these privileged government pensioners. Unbelievable.
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  The people doing the promising are the same as those receiving the benefits. That's the key point. Budget broken so we can't pay for something? Let's talk about putting money in. Systemic problem where the people making decisions about spending the money are the same people receiving benefits? You can't write a check to fix that. This isn't a traditional "how much do we tax and what do we spend our money on?" public policy discussion. Systemic problems are another kind of problem entirely. They deserve and require non-partisan attention and discussion.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    Indeed. Also notice that some of the worst problems are in locations that already have very high local and state taxes, such as California. There's simply no reason to believe that throwing more money at these systemic problems will fix them. In fact, it may well exacerbate them instead.

ars 8y ago

I didn't realize US taxes were so high in comparison to other countries. You are looking at the wrong table. Look at the next table instead and see just how high the US is relative to other countries. The only thing we don't tax is goods, but that's to help lower income people - the same people you want to help.

sykhic 8y ago
The next table (the one below, right?) shows only the relative percent of where taxes come from. It does not describe tax rates. It merely states that around 50% of U.S. tax revenue come from taxing income and profits. This is not the tax rate on that source.
- ars 8y ago
  > The next table (the one below, right?) Yes. > shows only the relative percent of where taxes come from. It does not describe tax rates. I know. But if the US is to raise rates they would raise them on Goods and Services, not on income because the tax is already very heavily skewed toward income. And regardless of that, the breakdown alone shows that the US tax code is more progressive than other countries.
rayiner 8y ago
You raise the other really important consideration, which is that if we were to raise taxes to the same levels as Germany or Sweden, taxes wouldn't go up on rich people and corporations: https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-their-government-spending https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-the.... The top marginal tax rate for someone in California, even with the Trump tax cuts, is similar to someone in Sweden. The difference is that in the U.S., the 50%+ rate kicks in around $500,000-1,000,000 HHI, while in Sweden it kicks in at the equivalent of around $100,000 HHI. Sweden collects as much revenue from its 25% VAT, which is enormously regressive, as from income taxes.
- adventured 8y ago
  The US middle class is entirely oblivious to how extraordinarily low its taxes are. Despite having one of the highest disposable income levels on earth, it somehow manages to blow all of its money on consumer crap from China, $300/month cell phone plans, $200 DirecTV plans, etc., instead of saving it. That's despite the US having a lower cost of living than Germany and France. All the right politicians bleat about lowering taxes - you really can't, the rich are already paying for everything as it is now, we can hardly get more progressive (on income taxes at least). You can't lower taxes on the bottom 75%, it's just pandering. The left bleats about the well-off not paying their fair share, somehow paying for nearly everything isn't a fair share. They're both wrong as usual. More plausibly, to pay for ballooning entitlement costs, infrastructure, expanding healthcare, etc. taxes need to go up on everyone.

rayiner 8y ago

> Instead of asking why they have no pensions they seek to equalize status by falsely believing we can't afford any sort of pension. More accurately: we can't afford the pensions we've promised with the taxes we're willing to pay. It's not a normative argument but a descriptive one. And within the American free market, there is little incentive for people to pay more taxes to close that gap. Why pay more taxes to Illinois--and not get any increased public services from those taxes, because the money is going to people who have already retired--when you can move to Tennessee or Texas and pay less?

sykhic 8y ago
I believe at some point in time California and other wealthy states will want to secede. They are subsidizing the poorer states and at some point they may question the benefits of the union.
- harryh 8y ago
  California would have a HUGE water problem if they left the US. That alone is pretty much a deal breaker.
  - sykhic 8y ago
    Countries do make agreeements on water usage. Even countries that don't like each other. Like Pakistan and India.

kodablah 8y ago

I'm always dismayed here and elsewhere to see everyone assuming that collection is the problem, not the dispensing and management. If someone proves incapable of proper budgeting, surely it is foolish to want them to have more money? Always sad that it's everyone but the policy and budget makers being blamed for the failures of policy and budget making. You can argue an honest politician can't survive, but you shouldn't shift blame. It seems like some feel it's a catch 22, that citizens don't want to pay for things yet they want things. But in reality, those clamoring for the improvements and government assistance are rarely those that don't want to pay and/or recognize government fallacies wrt spending. If you want to tackle the problems, you need to first be honest with where they lie...and not having enough money is not where the problems lie.

rayiner 8y ago
As someone who supports higher taxation, I've come around to the idea that liberals and conservatives are largely talking past each other on this point. Yes, our taxes are too low (if we want to have the kind of welfare state Sweden or Germany have). Yes, our public sector is particularly inefficient, compared to Sweden or Germany (or France or Canada). In my experience your average voter who opposes higher taxes isn't a Randian. Rather, they feel like they're not getting enough in return for what they pay in taxes. (And when you look at data about how we spend more to get less in education, transit, etc., turns out they're right!)
- kodablah 8y ago
  > our taxes are too low [...] our public sector is particularly inefficient Right. You cannot begin fixing the first problem in a democracy until you begin fixing the second. The solutions cannot happen in parallel either. So we either need to better prioritize our complaints or accept that attempts to fix the first problem is often just flushing people's money that they may need. Perfection is not a requirement, just some level of mediocrity could be enough to restore some trust.
sykhic 8y ago
I agree that it's largely a crisis of leadership. Both major parties are to blame. Kicking the can down the road, so to speak, has proved politically rewarding. I think that we, as a people, need to stop thinking that taxation is inherently bad. Taxation with incompetent governance is inherently bad. Taxation with little in return is bad. But taxation itself is not bad. Nor are we overtaxed in absolute terms. We are overtaxed in terms of return from government. I certainly don't advocate throwing money at the situation. I advocate that as a nation we take a step back on reassess what our views on government are. We've largely bought into the false beliefs that government is always incompetent, government regulation is inherently bad, and taxation is bad. I don't see how to get out of the mess we are in. These are structural problems in the nation and I think secession is going to occur in the next 50 years or so.

Shivetya 8y ago

Public sector pensions are deficits and eventual bankruptcy are the result of greed and politics and not taxation. chicago is a poster child for the corruption that has created a system which will bankrupt in three years [1]. It was never sustainable but its continued expansion kept politicians in office. just look at the numbers in the story I linked, what reasonable group of people would have ever signed off on this? Chicago isn't alone. Its rampant. six figure retirements? no public service job warrants that. and it isn't just the public sector employees, there are story after story of city bureaucrats making a quarter million or more and that is just up front money. simply put, they control the piggy bank and they are willing to loot it for gains today because they don't plan to be in office when the bill comes due [1] https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/511130434-projection-chicago-s-police-pension-fund-will-be-broke-in-2021 https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/511130434-projection-chi...

ThomPete 8y ago

Taxes are pretty high in the US for the upper middle class especially. IMO corporations should be taxed in a way that the more they make with fewer people the more they get taxed relative to other companies who make the same but have more people. Productivity in the age of digitalization is not what it used to be and I don't think it's a good way to measure anymore as we have way more supply than we have demand. Today it's more about technology leverage.

ThomPete 8y ago
Would love to hear why some disagree with this. (two downvotes) what am I missing?

jwess 8y ago

Perhaps people feel overtaxed, not in absolute terms, but relative to the services provided? The US Gov collected approximately 3.3T in revenue in FY2016--more than $10,000 for every person in the country. By comparison, the Netherlands collected 255B Euros from a population of 17M, or about $17k USD per person (2016 figure, according to OECD statistics). Clearly, a much higher number at the federal level, but they have a much lower average provincial tax (~$1,500) compared to the average state tax in the US, which varies widely, but averages out to about $4,800, bringing the totals to ~$14,800/person in the US, vs ~$18,500 in the Netherlands. Yes, the Dutch pay a 25% premium, but in my opinion they get a good ROI for their tax dollars. I think the issue of ROI is a major barrier to increasing tax rates in the US.

sykhic 8y ago
Yes, clearly the return on services and government investment is quite poor in the U.S. It's a situation in which people reasonably believe that paying more in taxes is throwing money at the problem. This is especially so when one of the major parties actively seeks to prove that government is incompetent.
adventured 8y ago
A great comment. Usually the US state taxation is ignored when making comparisons. You need to go further however, as the vast budget deficit is ultimately an inflationary tax on the US people (we'll follow the Japan scenario, and debase the dollar to deal with it over time, hammering the standard of living). You can see that represented by the dramatic damage to the US dollar during the Bush deficit years, which simultaneously sent the dollar plunging, commodities soaring and all other nation GDP figures soaring (when priced in dollars). Total spending is about $7.1 trillion, between Federal + State + Local. What kind of return are Americans getting for their $22,000(!) per year? An absolutely horrendous return, that's what. The US state + local spending is like an entire extra Federal Government stapled on. I'm not concerned with slashing spending as some are, I'm overwhelmingly concerned about using that spending effectively instead. There's vast progress to be had in focusing just on that.

jakecrouch 8y ago

Raising taxes is not the only way to improve public infrastructure. One can also lower the trade deficits, improve the technology the government uses, and legislate away some of the problems (jails would be less full if drug offenses didn't carry such harsh penalties). Taxation should only be tried when nothing else has worked. With 50% marginal income tax rates in many states, the US leans much more towards the communist than Randian side of the spectrum as it is.

tiatia123 8y ago

"The road to an Ayn Randian paradise in which everyone fends for themselves will lead us to ruin." Possibly. But having fend all for myself just to stay alive, I don't feel the need to fend for others. But go ahead. You have my blessings. My blessings but not my money!

milesvp 8y ago

I'm not sure how much I trust these tax rates. My understanding was that government spending is roughly 33% of GDP here in the US. This was true when I was in undergrad, and it looks to be roughly correct today. https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/percent_gdp https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/percent_gdp (not sure how much I trust this site, but it corroborates what I learned in undergrad with only a few minutes of googling). This means that the tax rate must be close to 33%. Else you'd have amazing deficits balooning quite quickly. Maybe it's ignoring corporate taxes? or ignoring other things on our W-2, like L&I and social security/medicare? It 's also probably ignoring local taxes, a 10% sales tax is hard to ignore. I once calculated my effective marginal tax rate at 45%, and it stopped me from pursuing a higher paying job, since my take home didn't change enough to be worth the higher stress and the money I'd have to spend to combat said stress.

sykhic 8y ago
We do have massive deficits.
greedo 8y ago
Federal marginal tax rates for 2018 are capped at 37% if you make $500K ($600K for a couple). If you're hitting that plus 8% for state, then I don't have too much sympathy. And that's a marginal rate, not an effective rate (which it seems you're conflating). If you earned $500k, and were single/no deps, and just took the standard $12K deduction, your Federal tax would be 29% ($145K). I can't imagine someone with that income not having more deductions or IRA/401 contributions that would minimize the tax burden, but I suppose there's always someone out there completely clueless.

gred 8y ago

> Corporations have largely shunted the responsibility for retirement savings onto individual workers. Now said workers have no pensions and have uncertain retirements. Instead of asking why they have no pensions they seek to equalize status by falsely believing we can't afford any sort of pension. Aren't you ignoring Social Security? For example, average Social Security monthly payments appear to be around $1400/month [1]. Spain, as an example of a high-tax, cradle-to-grave care system, provides pensions that appear to average a little under 800 euros/month ($940/month) [2]. And that's ignoring all of the Roth and 401(k) extras available out there. Am I missing something? [1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102814/what-maximum-i-can-receive-my-social-security-retirement-benefit.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102814/what-maximum... [2] https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/3287811/0/cuanto-cobra-media-pensionista-espana/ https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/3287811/0/cuanto-cobra-medi...

mistermann 8y ago

> The road to an Ayn Randian paradise in which everyone fends for themselves will lead us to ruin. It always depresses me to read comments like this. Rand's central themes were about corrupt relationships between pseudo-capitalists and government, the immorality of a desire for the unearned, and the consequences of what will happen to a society that can't be bothered to concern themselves with ethics. Well, one of these days these chickens are going to come home to roost, and instead of people hanging their heads in shame and regret because they ignored her supremely confident warnings, instead they're going to charge her with the crime. The irony. "The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone. It holds that the rational interests of men do not clash - that there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned, who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as traders, giving value for value." As a cherry on top, while there's still time to recover from mistakes of the past (there is a great deal of ruin in a nation, as they say), rather than eating a little humble pie, listening for a change to those who said "I told you so", and getting our affairs in order, we will actually choose to blaze straight ahead at full throttle on the exact same trajectory. And in the end, we'll end up selling off infrastructure, piecemeal, for pennies on the dollar, some to the very criminals we were warned about, and the rest to other nations who were smart enough to crack a book.

sykhic 8y ago
I use Any Randian to describe those who publicly cite her and they tend to have a certain political philosophy that is best described by me as, "I've got mine, fuck you." I'm not critiquing her personally or her philosophy. It's sort of like Ghandi's famous quote on Christianity. He said, "Your Jesus I like. Your Christians, I do not."
- mistermann 8y ago
  > I use Any Randian to describe those who publicly cite her and they tend to have a certain political philosophy that is best described by me as, "I've got mine, fuck you." a) Do you think it is responsible to be opaque on whom you are attributing the belief to, particularly considering the topic of conversation and the fact that her warnings on the matter were clear? b) These people you cite, are they Ayn Rand supporters, or critics who "think", despite no actual evidence beyond 4th hand also-uneducated opinions, that Rand's philosophy was anything remotely resembling "I've got mine, fuck you." Here's a fun experiment: try to google up a statement by an actual Objectivism supporter that supports anything near that sentiment, and observe how many false hits you get of the latter in your search. > I'm not critiquing her personally or her philosophy. Of those HN'ers who hold an opinion on Rand, you belong to a very exclusive club in my experience. Regardless, your sentiment now being explicit is good enough for me, thanks for straightening it out.

ghein 8y ago

There are political choices behind the decline in infrastructure. It costs NYC $2.1B per mile to build the Second Ave subway while in Europe it costs $200-500M per mile. There's California High Speed Rail, and then there's just the cost to build a condo in San Francisco (see the "historic" laundromat in The Mission). You have interlocking legislation, many reasons and opportunities to sue, esoteric work rules. Regardless of the validity of each element the structure as a whole is patently absurd and abhorrent. Then you have government spending. A university does not need much beyond some blackboards and some professors to teach most everything from Philosophy to French to Advanced Data Structures to Topology. Certain PhDs need more equipment but essentially all the expensive equipment should be paid for by research grants or contracts. Over the past decades more and more classes are taught by adjuncts at Starbucks level wages. Meanwhile the percentage of staff and spending on administrative functions has climbed dramatically. Adjusting for inflation, from 1947 to 1995, overall university spending increased 148 percent. Administrative spending, though, increased by a whopping 235 percent. Instructional spending, by contrast, increased only 128 percent, 20 points less than the overall rate of spending increase. Obama promised to invest in "shovel ready jobs". There was a backlash because so much money was being spent on construction and thus, due to the current makeup of construction workers, the vast majority of money would go to men. Spending was adjusted to include other projects so that the gender balance of spending would be more palatable. So to get $1 in new infrastructure spending you need an additional $1 in net new other government services. Or possibly much more than $1, depending on the various worker populations. This in an environment where you're getting only 25% to 10% of your initial money's worth. So $1 in net new infrastructure costs $20 or more.