Fixing social security

[BuzzH]

I do not deny that there was good fortune with the timing of my retirement. However, I am hardly alone. Anyone who has had a decent amount of money in the market since the aftermath of the 2008/09 recession has done equally well. It is not like I'm a market guru. I did know that owning stocks was the best place to grow one's money.

There are not many decade spans of time that one can point to when the market has not offered good returns. That is just a historical fact.

It is also a fact that the generous tax treatment of capital gains has much less to do with what's good for the economy, but rather what is good for wealthy investors.

S&P 500, you're "gambling" on the top 500 companies in the world's largest economy.

If all those 500 companies head down the shitter, the least of your worries will be your 401, taxes, and capital gains.

 

[VikingsGuy]

You don't get it.

Corporations don't pay taxes. The "cost" of taxes are just factored into the total revenue stream that you the consumer end up paying when you buy their product or service. If you have ever seen a large corp's balance sheet you would understand. Taxes, interest paid, asset depreciation along with the cost of the goods sold, salaries and overhead like building maintenance are all taken off to arrive at a net income or profit. That net income has a floor (8-10%) or the company ceases to exist financially. If everything stays the same except for taxes going up, guess what, the company has to raise their prices so the net income math works out in the end. You the consumer pays that increase or the company fades away. How they choose to spend that profit is up to each company - they can pay shareholders a dividend so that investors continue to buy their stock, they can plow that money back into expanding their business (which also translates into hiring more people). If they pay less taxes, they can lower prices to you and gain market share or keep prices high, increase profits and risk losing market share to a company that undercuts them.

But guess what - the power is all yours. Don't like that a company pays their CEO too much, don't buy their product. Don't like that they earn a 50% profit, don't buy their product. Spend your money elsewhere. The consumer pays their salaries, pays the taxes, pays for their building maintenance, etc. Corporations are just the middlemen money handlers between you and the Government. Basic economics.

While we appear to disagree on much in this thread, I agree that corporate taxes are of questionable value and actually drive some really stupid behaviors.

 

[406dn]

So, if corporations do not pay taxes, their customers do, why do they really care what the tax rate on their profits are?

This imo is another myth like tax cuts paying for themselves. Part of the sales pitch for the corporate tax cut passed while Trump was in office was...wait for it...family income would rise "very conservatively" by $4k. That never happened.

 

[Nick87]

I don't buy it.

The same is said of corporate tax. That if you let companies pay less tax they invest it back into the business, employees, and that whole lie known as trickle down economics.

It's all crap, they just increase pay for ceo's, share holders, and upper management. They don't reinvest, they take bigger profits.

Wish it wasn't true but that's been my first hand experience. Company I work for was effected by covid I'd say minimal at best. Company with a dozen employees got $800,000 in PPP. Figured maybe we'd see some invested in the company. Both owners remodeled there houses, and both the owners smart ass kids got new Company vehichles...still waiting for maybe the a/c to be fixed in the machines or something similar.

 

[Alpine01]

Right, that's why corporate tax rates dont matter and businesses spend millions lobbying Congress to lower them. They just care about us consumers, nothing in it for them. Laffin'....

Then they squeal like stuck pigs when they're raised...sell crazy somewhere else.

Corporate tax rates matter for two reasons and there is ample data from the USG that supports it dating back to post WWII. Lower rates have been shown to encourage foreign investment and discourage profit shifting (shipping profit overseas to more tax-friendly environments) and having a long-term positive impact on capital investments and R&D that in return increase productivity. These are long-term effects and take 4-8 years before those impacts are fully realized. Personal tax changes show their impacts in 12-18 months and data shows no added impacts after two years. So yeah, if all you focus on is the immediate impact, then you blind yourself to what corporate tax rates really do. Conversely, raising corp taxes discourages investment, particularly foreign and capital investments and companies shift earnings overseas to more favorable tax environments. From 1998 to 2018, west leaning countries reduced their corp tax rates from 40% to less than 25% while the US remained at 40%. Ireland reduced theirs to close to 12% and saw immediate growth in foreign investment with resulting economic gains. When US companies hold their profits overseas in these lower tax countries to shelter them, it means they are not investing in new facilities in the US. No US expansion means no US job expansion.

 

[cgasner1]

Wish it wasn't true but that's been my first hand experience. Company I work for was effected by covid I'd say minimal at best. Company with a dozen employees got $800,000 in PPP. Figured maybe we'd see some invested in the company. Both owners remodeled there houses, and both the owners smart ass kids got new Company vehichles...still waiting for maybe the a/c to be fixed in the machines or something similar.

They arrested some guys awhile back here for that kinda stuff. Government took back the muscle cars they bought with the money and decided to use it to pay the room and board for awhile in prison.

 

[Nick87]

They arrested some guys awhile back here for that kinda stuff. Government took back the muscle cars they bought with the money and decided to use it to pay the room and board for awhile in prison.

You'd think it's be pretty easy to wash that money. Or at least on paper.

 

[brymoore]

They arrested some guys awhile back here for that kinda stuff. Government took back the muscle cars they bought with the money and decided to use it to pay the room and board for awhile in prison.

Owners could take the funds from PPP as dividends and have no government recourse, once they jumped threw the hoops to get repayment waived.

 

[cgasner1]

You'd think it's be pretty easy to wash that money. Or at least on paper.

Idk was a big deal around here they ran some news articles and stuff pist a lot of people off

 

[mevertsen]

I've popped into this thread a couple times and seen it run the gambit of expected straw man angles so I'm not sure if the points I'm about to make have been covered or not. I'm not going to go back and read through 21 pages of circular logic discussions to see.

The biggest issue with social security is the same problem most corporate defined benefit plans had. The baby boomers retiring. The other big problem is that people are living much longer than when social security was started. More people retiring than there were paying into the trusts.

I saw an infographic a while back that showed something like 8 people paying for every person being paid out in the 1980's and that has dropped to something like 2.2 people paying in for every person being paid out now. (Of course I can't find that data so take it with a grain of salt, but based on the 2 points noted above it seems plausible).

The answer to fixing social security is very complicated and I think it will take many different pieces to make it work. Higher tax, reduced benefits, etc. are all going to have to come into play.

On the straw man argument about raising the tax on the rich to cover it I saw this article this morning and thought it was pretty interesting.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-income-taxes-top-1-percent-irs-tax-foundation-joe-biden-fair-share-3394355b?mod=WTRN_pos4&cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_169&cx_artPos=3

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That's right, the top 1% paid almost half of the total taxes paid! Pretty amazing. Shockingly, unlike the anecdotal things you hear, or the 1 in 1,000 exceptions, across the board as people make more money, they pay a higher % of their income in taxes. The top 1% paid the highest percentage of their income in taxes.

We do live in a democracy though and it's always easy to just say to tax the people who make more than us to pay for things.

Oh well, I'm pretty discouraged on the whole thing. Partisan politics do not appear to be very good at actually solving problems that need to be fixed. That takes compromise and a willingness to work together to accomplish something.

8 to 1 makes sense for the 13 percent SS rate.

 

[BuzzH]

Corporate tax rates matter for two reasons and there is ample data from the USG that supports it dating back to post WWII. Lower rates have been shown to encourage foreign investment and discourage profit shifting (shipping profit overseas to more tax-friendly environments) and having a long-term positive impact on capital investments and R&D that in return increase productivity. These are long-term effects and take 4-8 years before those impacts are fully realized. Personal tax changes show their impacts in 12-18 months and data shows no added impacts after two years. So yeah, if all you focus on is the immediate impact, then you blind yourself to what corporate tax rates really do. Conversely, raising corp taxes discourages investment, particularly foreign and capital investments and companies shift earnings overseas to more favorable tax environments. From 1998 to 2018, west leaning countries reduced their corp tax rates from 40% to less than 25% while the US remained at 40%. Ireland reduced theirs to close to 12% and saw immediate growth in foreign investment with resulting economic gains. When US companies hold their profits overseas in these lower tax countries to shelter them, it means they are not investing in new facilities in the US. No US expansion means no US job expansion.

The gullible will believe in anything, including the Easter bunny.

Still wondering where these corporate tax rates dropping and associated savings went back to the consumer?

Sounds like that really isn't the case, more non sense about R&D, profit shifting, reinvestment.

The only profit shifting from low corporate tax rates are the profits shifting into the pockets of the top 1%.

Fact.

 

[cgasner1]

Owners could take the funds from PPP as dividends and have no government recourse, once they jumped threw the hoops to get repayment waived.

Two Montana men charged with $1 million COVID-relief fraud scheme

The two men applied for over $1,043,000 in PPP loans last year between April and December. In the applications, the men allegedly made numerous false statements about having paid payroll

billingsgazette.com

 

[brymoore]

Two Montana men charged with $1 million COVID-relief fraud scheme

The two men applied for over $1,043,000 in PPP loans last year between April and December. In the applications, the men allegedly made numerous false statements about having paid payroll

billingsgazette.com

Your link requires subscription. From the little I can see they committed fraud. I wasn’t talking about criminals.

 

[cgasner1]

Your link requires subscription

They didn’t take ppp still have to charge for it

 

[brymoore]

They didn’t take ppp still have to charge for it

I don’t know what you mean.

 

[Alpine01]

The gullible will believe in anything, including the Easter bunny.

Still wondering where these corporate tax rates dropping and associated savings went back to the consumer?

Sounds like that really isn't the case, more non sense about R&D, profit shifting, reinvestment.

The only profit shifting from low corporate tax rates are the profits shifting into the pockets of the top 1%.

Fact.

And the closed-minded can't see past the end of their nose.

Hope you have a fantastic Easter Sunday with your family.

 

[406dn]

I think you would be hard pressed to show how lowering corporate tax rates benefits ANYONE directly other than the corporations and the shareholders.

Shareholders, more or less are not found in the bottom half of the economic scale. It really isn't before you get to the upper ~10-15% before they might have a significant portfolio. But, it's the upper 1% that REALLY benefits. Since that 1% of the population owns 26% of all wealth in the country, a lot of that is stock wealth.

Lower tax rates to attract business is a race to the bottom. If I lower my rates, you lower your rate, and on and on. It is just another bait and switch, just like its first cousin...tax cuts pay for themselves.

Happy Easter to everyone

 

[Deleted member 28227]

You don't get it.

Corporations don't pay taxes. The "cost" of taxes are just factored into the total revenue stream that you the consumer end up paying when you buy their product or service. If you have ever seen a large corp's balance sheet you would understand. Taxes, interest paid, asset depreciation along with the cost of the goods sold, salaries and overhead like building maintenance are all taken off to arrive at a net income or profit. That net income has a floor (8-10%) or the company ceases to exist financially. If everything stays the same except for taxes going up, guess what, the company has to raise their prices so the net income math works out in the end. You the consumer pays that increase or the company fades away. How they choose to spend that profit is up to each company - they can pay shareholders a dividend so that investors continue to buy their stock, they can plow that money back into expanding their business (which also translates into hiring more people). If they pay less taxes, they can lower prices to you and gain market share or keep prices high, increase profits and risk losing market share to a company that undercuts them.

I work for an OG company, the pricing of our product is entirely dependent on commodity pricing, we can't pass the cost on to the consumer. If US producers decide to "raise prices" we would just be undercut by Saudi... hence commodity.

The" passing on to consumer" myth only works if demand is totally elastic, and demand destruction doesn't exist. Apple can't sell a $5000 Iphone and be successful.

When the Trump tax cuts were passed we saw tons of companies do stock buybacks, they didn't hire more employees, they didn't expand, etc.

Certainly there is a limit to the effectiveness of any tax, once it get's to a certain point it makes more sense to cheat than to pay the tax.

 

[BuzzH]

And the closed-minded can't see past the end of their nose.

Hope you have a fantastic Easter Sunday with your family.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/congress-should-revisit-2017-tax-laws-trillion-dollar-corporate-rate-cut-in#:~:text=A%20study%20from%20researchers%20at,for%20firm%20managers%20and%20executives.%E2%80%9D

 

[Forkyfinder]

Lets just put the libs in charge - covid will go on forever.

Baffling how some people get off on thinking the other side of the aisle is greedy - yet flippantly feel entitled to other peoples money and possessions.

Happy easter!