Gender: Male Location: The Proud Nation of Kekistan
I have to say the reactions to this bio have been frankly hysterical. “The evil rich people are stealing from the American citizens and getting handouts! This is Armageddon! There will be no more America after this. HOLY SHIT WE KILLED TINY TIM!!! TINY TIM IS DEAD AND WE KILLED HIM!!!”
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Shadilay my brothers and sisters. With any luck we will throw off the shackles of normie oppression. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Praise Kek!
THE MOTTO IS "IN KEK WE TRUST"
Gender: Male Location: The Proud Nation of Kekistan
Like when Trump got elected I was like “there’s no way he’s getting re-elected”, though watching a particular very public face of his opposition it’s hard to not think “wow these dumbasses are gonna get this guy elected again and they won’t even know it’s their fault.”
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Shadilay my brothers and sisters. With any luck we will throw off the shackles of normie oppression. We have nothing to lose but our chains! Praise Kek!
THE MOTTO IS "IN KEK WE TRUST"
Yep, it's sad. It is why they aren't to be taken seriously. Some morons were protesting and shouting this tax plan was going to kill them lol.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Please substantiate this claim that they had no clue about anything in the tax bill? You can't because aside from most of the interviewees not being quizzed for their knowledge of the bill's specifics, you also have no idea how many people were interviewed overall, and just how many of those people have responses similar to those interviewed.
Of course all of this is just a deflection from the main point in the post you originally responded to:
The source you cited tried to potray a group of people as stupid based on what a chest picked handful of them said regarding a [i]portion[/quote]of the plan.
It's rather hypocritical for someone who doesn't trust media for their misleading narratives to prop up media that blatantly misrepresents what a group of people say.
Your quest to call out hypocrisy is likely best started with yourself.
Do tell Surt, which part of my post was this supposed to address? Please do be specific and quote me. Or are we deflecting again? Do be specific. Which media source specifically called it the end of the world? Something doesn't have to be the end of the world to deserve heavy criticism. Not that you'd actually be able to determine how heavily the tax bill is being criticized since you only read headlines. Surt logic: Antifa is neither the worst thing in the world or the best thing in the world. Hence news that gives Antifa lopsidedly negative coverage is fake news.
Last edited by Rockydonovang on Dec 24th, 2017 at 09:39 PM
Holy shit, are you retarded? They do not act like they are being told things they already know were in the tax bill. If they knew they were in the tax bill they would have known it wasn't Bernies plan.
And you said it's blatantly not true the media isn't doing the opposite, but they are IMO.
And I was using hyperbole, they are acting like this is the end of the world. Are you saying you truly didn't get that?
Your Antifa example makes no sense. Try harder. I never said negative coverage is fake news lol. I said people are getting hysterical. We had people protesting this saying they were going to die over this.
And btw the quoting system here doesn't always work. You should know that by now.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Last edited by Surtur on Dec 24th, 2017 at 10:14 PM
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
"As the Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin tweeted on Tuesday, 80 percent of households will get cuts in 2018, but only 17 percent in a WSJ poll believe they’re getting tax cuts"
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Someone's pissed his non sequitirs's have been exposed.
Surt, my post was talking about how the media has covered the parts of the tax bill the video included, you deflected onto some tangent about media hysteria which you've backed up by cherrypicking one or two articles, one of which wasn't actually about "hysteria".
Cherry picked interviewees don't really tell me much for the reasons I stated and you ignored.
I'm aware you were being hyperbolic. I made fun of your hyperbole because it doesn't tell me anything of substance because it's so exaggerated it doesn't remotely resemble the level of criticism that's been levied against Trump's bill by the vast majority of mainstream media outlets or mainstream "leftists". Naturally you usually make points with extreme hyperbole as then you don't have to actually represent what you're crtiticizing accurately.
It's easy to criticize "Trump is ending the world!" over "Trump's policy is bad".
I know the quote system doesn't always work, hence I made a request, not a demand. That doesn't mean you can't paraphrase the part of my post you were responding to.
Lol, you literally asked me to substantiate my claim about the video. I did, and I pointed out it was a retarded thing to even ask. Which it was lol. If they knew those things were in the Republican tax plan they would have known it wasn't Bernie's. Now suddenly it is "well my point was really something else, despite specifically asking you about that as well".
And I never said the media never covered this stuff. I said that they pull similar shit by giving one side of the story or just not all the details. You can see what Morning Joe did as an example.
I already showed you hysterical reactions though, you can dismiss if you want, but then don't ask lol.
And exactly, it IS easy to criticize the hysteria. Because it is so very unnecessary. There is shit to criticize without doing so. People on the left have a history of taking a legitimate issue and taking it to its extreme.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
Last edited by Surtur on Dec 24th, 2017 at 10:53 PM
I still take issue with your decision to call the welfare reforms cuts. You have detailed ways in which they retrenched spending in the immediate to short term, but they did literally zero to reel in welfare spending in the medium-long term.
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Indeed, I am surprised that any right winger would call them cuts, considering that your whole argument is that welfare spending has been rising and is out of control with no effects on poverty. Now, you are trying to pass the 1996 reforms off as a drastic reversal and a representation of your ideas in action, when it kept many welfare measures from New Deal and onwards intact.
Are you really saying that a 7 point drop in savings is more significant of a change than a 30+ point drop in poverty among seniors? Because I'm sure that most would see that as a rather good tradeoff. Having almost half of seniors in poverty was a dreadful situation and one that would be inconceivable to go back to in exchange for a few percentage points more in savings. The poor and lower-middle class, who do not have the financial capacity to save significant amounts, would be utterly crushed if social security were abolished. And those over 30 who have been expecting to have their retirement savings buttressed by Social Security may need to, suddenly, start putting massive amounts of their income aside to ensure they won't retire with little-nothing. According to David Moratta, President of Marotta Wealth Management, those who start to save even at 30 have to put 20%+ away (> current payroll tax), and that only increases as you go on.
And of course, that is utterly inconceivable for those who are on average or low incomes, who may still have low amounts of spare income to save even after tax cuts. After all, they pay very low effective rates so won't get much back.
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I'm not interested in debating an economist interpretation of economic output. Not the topic of this discussion. The topic is welfare and its reduction of poverty. And this looks to be a total rethink of economic output that is not the consensus.
Source for graph? Because graph compiled by the CBPP does not show stagnant poverty rates.
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Although I imagine this is the case of you using graphs and figures which totally discount the effect of transfer in the forms of welfare payments (and, by the way, the taxes that go along with them). In which case, this is a disagreement on the right sort of data to use.
Okay then, let's replace the current system of payroll taxes. Let's bring Social Security under the purview of general taxation, and allow the government to use a more diverse range of tools to pay for it. A small sales tax on the national level, along with eliminating several deductions on income tax (most of which benefit the wealthy, particularly the mortgage/charitable deductions), could be but a few ways we could do this. We don't need to throw social security out, just change the way it is funded.
Indeed, a study by two economists at the Tax Policy Center (J.Nunns and J.Rosenberg), suggest that such an approach would lead to an effective tax decrease for every income quintile but the very highest. See page 29 for the breakdown. This isn't the only way to replace payroll taxes, but it is the most suggested and would seem to have good results.
Not true, I'm afraid. A team of economists from MIT and Harvard studied welfare systems in several countries, and concluded there there was "no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work."
Well,no. Because your argument is that we should abolish welfare altogether. The 1996 reforms did not come even remotely close to doing this, and welfare spending continued to grow afterwards. My argument is that a disciplined welfare state is a good tool to reduce poverty, and the welfare reforms after 1996 show that is correct. You seem to be moving the goalposts here.
No, because I support the reforms. I don't support a welfare state that gives money in an irresponsible manner, and the '96 reforms fixed many of those problems. You are moving the goalposts and defending a set of reforms that doesn't even enshrine your beliefs of the welfare system into law, and actually done nothing to stop the rise in welfare spending that you right wingers so constantly decry.
The AFDC was a truly flawed element of the pre-96 welfare system, so I'm not going to defend it. I'll simply point to other welfare programs which can alleviate poverty whilst still encouraging work, like the EITC.
Well, that's exactly what happened. Here's the CBPP's analysis of results by Jeffrey Grogger.
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Except that actual studies on the matter found the expansion of the EITC almost as effective at alleviating single mother unemployment than welfare policies and labor market factors combined. See above graphic.
Or reforming them to better encourage work, while still keeping welfare and welfare spending intact? Because that is what the '96 reforms did. Okay, cuts in the immediate to short term, but the biggest changes were in how welfare was distributed and the welfare to work incentives.
Last edited by lazybones on Jan 3rd, 2018 at 08:46 PM
Well, then we're moving into the realm of hypotheticals. That's fine, but considering the powerful effects of welfare programs, there would need to be substantial assurances that poverty would not decrease afterwards. And economic analysis show that poverty could creep up to as high as 29% without welfare programs.
Again, economists from MIT/Harvard have studied the effects of welfare payments and have concluded that they do not reduce work incentive. The Anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure Before Taxes and Transfers is obviously flawed because it literally does not factor in the benefits of these programs. And considering the fact that inflation has outpaced wages in many years, it is likely that abolishing welfare will just push poor people further into poverty and make the climb upwards more difficult. After all, the EITC actually gives extra $ when you earn and work more. The phase out is probably too soon, but it is ultimately an incentive to work harder. By removing this and other benefits, you would actually dampen the rewards for working harder and throw about 70 million into poverty, or further into it, from which they will find it hard to ascend from due to those stagnating wages.
The first problem I have is that the average American isn't the primary beneficiary of welfare programs, so we would expect them to pay in a little more than they get back.
But $2181 isn't that much. In fact, that's about $300 less than just the average EITC payment of $2477. Remember that Medicaid also shaves off about $1,500 off insurance costs for adults, which is almost as much as they pay in for that program by your calculations. So the net tax relief in terms of income tax for middle earners could drop to about $680 for some, which is trivial.
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And that shouldn't be surprising, because in a progressive income tax system, the poor and lower-middle class pay a very low effective tax rate. And welfare payments are concentrated towards them, so they receive a net benefit and the average earners are slight net-cost, but not much. The notable issue with the current system is that the EITC is not expansive enough, and should cover more tax payers to ensure that people are always working towards a higher income and can get their money back in some way.
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Including state taxes in this seems somewhat misplaced considering that we are talking about mainly federal welfare programs (so if they were abolished, only federal taxes would be affected). And most of the taxes that lower income people pay are payroll taxes, which we could replace while still keeping welfare intact, as I have explained earlier citing the study by Nunn and Rosenberg.
Okay, I agree. Let's get rid of payroll tax. I simply believe that we should have the best of both worlds by replacing payroll tax with a more diverse and less punishing range of taxes. That way, we can still keep the welfare system in place while giving most people tax relief.
The average American would potentially receive less in tax relief than the average EITC payment, and even less when you factor the benefits from Medicaid. And although it does get less rosy when you include payroll tax, we can always replace payroll tax, reduce it, or make it more progressive. And also as I explained earlier, abolishing Social Security would see people at the age of 30 with few-little retirement savings needing to put more than 20% of their income away to retire comfortably, which is lower than the tax relief they would receive from abolishing payroll tax. The result? Crippling senior poverty and a more squeezed middle class.
Okay, but you need to explain what those other means are, and how they would alleviate poverty for about 70 million people like the current programs do. Eliminating payroll tax would indeed be a massive boost, but it would come at the cost of eliminating Social Security unless it was replaced with a sales tax. Social Security lifts millions of seniors out of poverty, and provides an essential safety net for poor people who cannot save and could not adequately save even with refunded payroll tax, so if you abolish it then you will certainly make things worse as far as poverty is concerned.
Okay, but the recent social trends like the decline of religion make more unlikely for steps three and four to be achieved. I know it is difficult to accept, but this way of life is simply dying. Welfare or no welfare, we will continue to see the decline of marriage and the family because of less religiosity.
More recent studies have found little correlation between welfare and work rates, because welfare is managed in a far more competent and smarter way now. I'm not sure if Goodman's findings really apply to contemporary society.
That's a pretty absurd graph. You can't just take previous trends and baselessly extrapolate them. After all, you have no idea whether poverty rates would have continued to decline in the same way without welfare. You are just assuming they would, and that such decreases would follow quite a linear trend.
And of course, we actually do have studies that show that poverty would be around 29% still if it were not for the welfare payments, so we know that your graph represents an overoptimistic view. I'd also point to the fact that the post-war economic boom was coming to a close at the time the War on Poverty was implemented. And considering that economic growth is a massive factor on poverty, I would suggest that poverty rates would have stopped declining in the same way, because growth had slumped and there were more recessions.
The measure the CBPP uses is the Supplementary Poverty rate after transfers and taxes. So it does take into account the taxes, and we actually see a steeper decrease by that metric, which would suggest many net beneficiaries from these programs, which is hardly surprising given the low effective tax rate that poorer people pay.
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The whole point of this discussion was whether welfare has reduced poverty. And you have accepted that welfare has indeed done so after I provided the figure of about 70 million people being either lifted out of poverty or being made less poor. You can argue on the other effects on welfare and potential alternatives, but all that ultimately detracts from the fact that the welfare system is a powerful anti-poverty tool once you actually factor them in the statistics.
As I have said, point conceded on productivity vs wages. But inflation vs wages is still unaddressed. Yes, that is the problem of the Fed, but every major country has a central bank. It's not like we could ever get rid of it. Thus, we need to work around through welfare payments which top up the earnings of low-middle income earners.
Yeah, not convinced that the words of a long-dead Chinese philosopher have any sort of relevance to a debate on modern welfare payments. And if your quote of him is meant as a suggestion that we could teach people to live without welfare, then that is simply ridiculous. After all, wages are being outpaced by inflation in many years, so it'll be extremely difficult for people to work their way up (as their pay increases will be shredded).
This is interesting, but other studies on this have found that government spending cuts reduce growth, which would suggest that government spending increases would boost growth as long as they were well targeted. In particular the study done by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, its findings which you can find below.
Although I suppose the multiplier effect was not as powerful as I first thought, so point conceded there. But there does seem to be at least a modest to moderate benefit from govt spending.
Again, while I'm sure welfare takes some of the blame for the decline of marriage, I'd point to the decline of religiosity as the dominant factor here. After all, the decline of marriage is a trend that we are seeing across the West, despite Western countries have very different welfare systems. The only constant is the decline of religion, which has been happening everywhere.
Except the evidence shows it to be absolutely true. Without welfare, the poverty rate would be around 29%, which was its rate in around 1947.
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Although to be fair, the 'no government assistance' figures do not include taxes. But as the lower-middle income tax payers pay a low or negligible effective tax rate, I doubt that this would change the above findings too much.
Eh, it's more of a consensus among economists and historians. Many 'economic miracles' occurred after WW2. The Marshall Plan turbocharged economic growth and lead to a prolonged era of prosperity, which ended in the 70s (which may explain why poverty rates were declining up until that point and also reinforces my point that such poverty rate declines would not have continued, because the economic boom times were over by that point).
Correction:I meant higher, here, not lower. 20% is considerably higher than effective tax rate of lower-middle earners even after income+payroll.
I'm also not sure how long this discussion can continue given that we are operating from different premises, datasets, measurements, outlook on the economy/society, expert opinions etc... I don't mind going for a little longer, but I doubt there is going to be much movement here in terms of stances.
Last edited by lazybones on Jan 4th, 2018 at 12:53 PM
Multiple airlines now are giving raises due to this. American and Southwest I think.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
I'm still angry only the rich benefit off this tax plan.
__________________ Chicken Boo, what's the matter with you? You don't act like the other chickens do. You wear a disguise to look like human guys, but you're not a man you're a Chicken Boo.
One of the ways we can see the effect of marriage penalties is the effect on cohabitation rates,
And there is also the group effect that these programs inculcate. This means if people see their friends not getting married due to marriage penalties they may also follow suit. Due to the social nature of this behavior, it is not visible on the data. However, it can be seen in the survey responses. The American Family Survey, a nationally representative survey, asked recipients if they personally know someone that has chosen not to get married due to fear of losing benefits. 31% knew someone. There was a recent study conducted by the AEI found that the marriage penalty only demonstrated a small affect the decision to get married. This is probably due to the recent semi-neutralization of marriage penalties. To quote Rstreet,
So, while the marriage penalties have been mostly neutralized over these past few years much of the damage has already been done. The stigma attached to marriage inculcated by welfare has turned cohabitation into a more viable option for couples. And, due to the fact that such a penalty still does rear its head in welfare programs, cohabitation is turning into to the new normal.
So to conclude, marriage penalties have had a major role in the destruction of marriage. While their effects have been moderately nullified, the damage done by these penalties is clear and evident. There is still a negative effect on divorce rates created by the programs. But marriages penalties are not the only way that welfare creates single-motherhood. The empirical work on the subject is quite clear. There are about 14 major studies that have found a link between welfare and unwed childbearing. The biggest of the studies being conducted by the CBO director June O’neil and Robert Plutnick. To quote welfare expert Michael Tanner,
There was an aggregation of the research created by the left-wing Urban Institute, (please log in to view the image)
There unfortunately has not been much recent research conducted on the effects of these programs. But, the incentive structure has not received any big change since ‘96 and most of those changes were overridden in 2002. You could argue that the abolishment of the AFDC has absolved welfare’s blame, but most of these studies also looked at food stamps and found a correlation and TANF acts in a similar manner to the AFDC.
Is there contrary evidence that refutes this notion?
There are two studies that I have found that paint a different picture regarding the relationship between welfare and births out of wedlock. There is a study conducted all the way back in 1985 by David Ellwood and Lawrence Summers. The study finds that because benefits rose sharply in the 1960s and then fell in the 1970s and 1980s. This is more of a scientific observation and actual empirical study. The fact is there may other reasons that could be responsible for this increase and the newer wave of studies finding different results indicates that exterior factors and the introduction to benefits could be responsible. There was also a study conducted by Robert Moffit in 1992. This study only finds a small correlation, but later in Moffit’s career he stated that evidence indicates that welfare is directly tied to out-of-wedlock births.
Moffit does hold some methodological criticisms of the study which I will address.
The disparities which he is referring too is the lack of consistent effect among ethnic groups. But as Michael Tanner notes in his book The End of Welfare: Fighting Poverty in the Civil Society,
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