The Fiscal Cliff

[PaloAltoCougar]

The medicare tax is put in a general fund and then the medicare payments are taken out of the general fund, is that what you are saying?

Yes.

[byu71]

That's how I see it, but I think you and I have respectfully exchanged our differing viewpoints about this somewhere in another thread.

Yes we have and I appreciate how the exchange has been handled. Your interpretation doesn't bother me.

One reason I said "claim" is I get now and then information from the SS department. It shows how much I paid in each year. I know that money is only invested in US Treasuries which is a fancy way of saying, the SS loans money to the US treasury like China, Japan, etc. do.

In the information it actually tells me how much money I am owed or to be repaid.

I will admit they aren't like a corporation who if you had lent money to, they have to be transparent and show you how much they owe and what there assets were. You could then decide if this looks like a good company to invest in or loan money to in the future.

Like I have said many times, they know how much they owe each of us based on what we have put in. Mine is in the $550-600 thousand range (plus interest earned or maybe it includes interest earned). Divide that number into what the treasury owes the SS system. That would be each of our current portions. I would be real curious of the $550-$600 I have put in, how much is still in treasuries and interest earned on the money.

I might be surprised to find out like the employee's who had their investment in Enron stock, I am screwed.

[byu71]

Yes.

Good to know. I will still bet the guy who pays into it and earns $50,000 is getting a bigger bang for his buck than the guy who earns $1,000,000.

Do they have like regular, bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum medicare cards?

[byu71]

I wonder if BYU, Ricks and other "non-tithing" contributions are going down due to new limitations on itemized deductions.

I doubt it will affect tithing much because it is more of a requirement or duty.

However, there could be an affect on "non-tithing" contributions made by the big income earners.

For instance someone earning $5,300,000 will have the first $150,000 of his/her donations non deductible if he/she gives $150,000 or above. It may even go higher than that.

Maybe after paying $500,000 in tithing and being able to only deduct $350,000, they won't worry about amounts above that because those amounts aren't affected.

Unless the 80% rule comes into effect and I haven't figured that out yet.

[U-Ute]

I wonder if BYU, Ricks and other "non-tithing" contributions are going down due to new limitations on itemized deductions.

I doubt it will affect tithing much because it is more of a requirement or duty.

However, there could be an affect on "non-tithing" contributions made by the big income earners.

For instance someone earning $5,300,000 will have the first $150,000 of his/her donations non deductible if he/she gives $150,000 or above. It may even go higher than that.

Maybe after paying $500,000 in tithing and being able to only deduct $350,000, they won't worry about amounts above that because those amounts aren't affected.

Unless the 80% rule comes into effect and I haven't figured that out yet.

You are talking about numbers I can't even fathom. So you lost me on all of this.

[Goatnapper'96]

An article in the WSJ claims that the President told Boehner that the US Federal Government doesn't have a spending problem, but that all of the excessive debt is due to the excessive amounts spent on health care.

I agree that health care is part of our spending problems, but if this is true that Obama said that there is no real way any major deal to fix the debt can be put together.

I don't know if I believe he really said that but I admit that is because I am an optimist. Perhaps I am wrong, are there those who really don't believe the US has a spending problem?

I thought there was consensus that we spend too much but the reality is much like household credit card debt until the money is not available we recognize we don't have the discipline to stop.

[byu71]

An article in the WSJ claims that the President told Boehner that the US Federal Government doesn't have a spending problem, but that all of the excessive debt is due to the excessive amounts spent on health care.

I agree that health care is part of our spending problems, but if this is true that Obama said that there is no real way any major deal to fix the debt can be put together.

I don't know if I believe he really said that but I admit that is because I am an optimist. Perhaps I am wrong, are there those who really don't believe the US has a spending problem?

I thought there was consensus that we spend too much but the reality is much like household credit card debt until the money is not available we recognize we don't have the discipline to stop.

There are people who just don't get it. Of course maybe they get it and I don't.

So many things can go wrong when you allow the market place to take it's course. You will be able to point to situations that just seem terribly unfair. You can find people who do blantantly wrong and corrupt things in the name of profit.

However, I maintain over the long run the market will eventually get it right. The government on the other hand won't. Point to any economy run by the government that has been as robust and innovative as ours.

Do you know there are more millionaire's in Utah than there are in all of France? Many more.

While Obama speaks eloquently against the big evil corporation and millionaire's and billionaire's, his policies eventually will have them getting bigger and bigger in monetary size, but few participating.

I could be wrong. I have never really looked into it. Who really has more of an elite class, the Americans or the Europeans?

[Joe Public]

I wonder if BYU, Ricks and other "non-tithing" contributions are going down due to new limitations on itemized deductions.

I doubt it will affect tithing much because it is more of a requirement or duty.

However, there could be an affect on "non-tithing" contributions made by the big income earners.

For instance someone earning $5,300,000 will have the first $150,000 of his/her donations non deductible if he/she gives $150,000 or above. It may even go higher than that.

Maybe after paying $500,000 in tithing and being able to only deduct $350,000, they won't worry about amounts above that because those amounts aren't affected.

Unless the 80% rule comes into effect and I haven't figured that out yet.

I haven't looked at it in detail, but I think it's the same as pre-2006 except that the amounts at which the 3%/80% rule kicks in have been increased (e.g., $300K for married filing jointly). Based on that, maybe contributions will decrease in roughly the same proportion by which they increased in 2006. I have no idea what that number is, though.

[byu71]

I haven't looked at it in detail, but I think it's the same as pre-2006 except that the amounts at which the 3%/80% rule kicks in have been increased (e.g., $300K for married filing jointly). Based on that, maybe contributions will decrease in roughly the same proportion by which they increased in 2006. I have no idea what that number is, though.

Well I am hoping what I have been told is wrong. Not for myself let me make very, very clear, this isn't me.

I would like to have built a company from nothing to $70,000,000 in sales, but I spent too much time on CB.

[Joe Public]

Well I am hoping what I have been told is wrong. Not for myself let me make very, very clear, this isn't me.

I would like to have built a company from nothing to $70,000,000 in sales, but I spent too much time on CB.

I don't think you're wrong. It should work basically as your example showed.

In 2012, if someone had $5,300,000 of AGI and donated $530,000 in tithing, then the entire $530,000 was deductible.

In 2013, if someone has $5,300,000 of AGI and donates $530,000 in tithing, then - assuming married filing jointly - the deduction is reduced by the lesser of:

• 3% of the excess of AGI over $300,000 for marrieds, or $150,000, or
• 80% of the deduction that would otherwise be allowed, or $424,000.

The lesser amount, or $150,000, is non-deductible in the 2013 example. In 2012, a $150,000 deduction was worth $52,500 assuming a 35% MTR. In 2013, a $150,000 deduction would be worth $59,400 assuming a 39.6% MTR.

In 2006, were people going to give another dollar to charity just because they got $0.35 back from the government? I don't know. Are people going to stop giving a dollar they used to give because they no longer get $0.35 back from the government? That's probably more likely, although I like to think a lot of this is non-tax driven (like you point out w/r/t tithing).

[frank ryan]

Well I am hoping what I have been told is wrong. Not for myself let me make very, very clear, this isn't me.

I would like to have built a company from nothing to $70,000,000 in sales, but I spent too much time on CB.

People who post on cb should pay triple taxes.

[MarkGrace]

There are people who just don't get it. Of course maybe they get it and I don't.

So many things can go wrong when you allow the market place to take it's course. You will be able to point to situations that just seem terribly unfair. You can find people who do blantantly wrong and corrupt things in the name of profit.

However, I maintain over the long run the market will eventually get it right. The government on the other hand won't. Point to any economy run by the government that has been as robust and innovative as ours.

Do you know there are more millionaire's in Utah than there are in all of France? Many more.

While Obama speaks eloquently against the big evil corporation and millionaire's and billionaire's, his policies eventually will have them getting bigger and bigger in monetary size, but few participating.

I could be wrong. I have never really looked into it. Who really has more of an elite class, the Americans or the Europeans?

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...-graph/263604/

[LA Ute]

I could be wrong. I have never really looked into it. Who really has more of an elite class, the Americans or the Europeans?

Being a millionaire is different from being in an "elite class."

In May 2012, the same month Mitt Romney made the “47 percent” remark that helped lose him the election, his consulting-industry alma mater, the Boston Consulting Group, released its annual report of global wealth, a statistics-laden summary of who’s rich where. The United States ranked seventh in millionaire households per capita. Of the countries that beat us, two are well-managed city-states — Singapore, which topped the list, and Hong Kong — and one is the world’s piggy bank, Switzerland. The remaining three ahead of us — Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — owe their wealth to vast oil deposits.

So among countries that are not statistical outliers, because of either their size or their natural resources or their readiness to conceal Nazi gold, the United States is the millionaire capital of the world. Various proposals have called for some type of “millionaire’s tax.” One version would impose a minimum tax rate on those earning $1 million or more per year. Another would exclude them from a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year. These measures are quite popular by all accounts. Earlier this year, for example, an Associated Press–GfK survey found that 65 percent of Americans backed a minimum federal tax rate of 30 percent for households earning over $1 million, an overwhelming endorsement of President Obama’s “Buffett rule.” State governments have also gotten in on the act. This November, voters in millionaire-dense California passed by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent a ballot initiative designed to “temporarily” hike taxes on high earners, and other states are sure to follow.

And yet the common conception of millionaires, on whom so much of the nation’s long-term fiscal viability depends, is largely a caricature. An accurate snapshot of this group — whether one understands it to include those who have $1 million or more in assets or those who make $1 million or more per year — shows that it is enviable, to be sure, but also that it pays a hefty share of the government’s bills. In 2007, a peak year for America’s high earners, the top 1 percent of households earned 19 percent of all income and paid 27 percent of all federal taxes, including payroll, corporate, excise, and income taxes.

Millionaires are also a surprisingly broad group of Americans, not just an über-wealthy group of idle rich. Among the millionaires-by-wealth, those whose net worth exceeds $1 million, the majority are working people, and not exclusively in professions that involve stethoscopes or compulsory neckties. Even the millionaires-by-earnings are a group that exhibits many qualities widely regarded as desirable: relatively fluid membership, entrepreneurial spirit, and increasing diversity of national origin as well as race. We might acknowledge the virtues of the millionaire class, even as we prepare to open its veins....

[Uncle Ted]

The United States spent more on its military than the next 13 nations combined in 2011:




What the public wants and what the public will get:



Source: America’s staggering defense budget, in charts

[byu71]

The United States spent more on its military than the next 13 nations combined in 2011:




What the public wants and what the public will get:



Source: America’s staggering defense budget, in charts

I see the house budget, where is the Senate budget? I would look at the Senate budget and the house budget and meet somewhere in between.

Both the public's thoughts and the Presidents thoughts are irrelevant. Both are based on emotion and a lack of well reasoned thought.