What the hell is social insurance tax?

Duh, it's tax on tax! You haven't spent much time in Canada, have you? :)

No- but i may be going there next month to knock boots with a lovely lady from Nova Scotia. :)

lemme guess...she's a red head.

sniper, I'm not positive.

Got the data from here
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm
and
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=203

I'm thinking its the tax that funds Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, etc.

The main thing I looked at was that total federal tax revenue in 2007 was $2.6 trillion and that's what I set FAIRTAX revenue to equal.

BTW, I ran across this site - lots of details about FAIRTAX that I didn't know.
http://fairtaxfraud.com/fallout.asp

Brunette. (Not posting pix, sorry)

Jyl i think medicare/ss, etc are their own separate taxes, and would not be part of a move to a federal "sales only" taxation system.

What do the numbers look like if you take that out?

Most of the people who advocate a flat tax would also like to see government spending cut to a thousandth of a percent of its current level. The only thing the government is allowed to do according to the Constitution is raise an army, fund the post office, and settle inter-state trade disputes. Everything else is unconstitutional fluff.

FYI

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1250199793.jpg

If I set FAIRTAX rate to generate $1.8 trillion revenue (replacing indiv income tax, corp income tax, excise and other - but not replacing social insurance taxes) then rate can be 30% if applied to all consumer spending.

At 30% FAIRTAX rate, quintiles 1 through 4 of households are still in deeper deficit than before. Quintile 4 (household income between $36K and $58K) goes from saving $2,500/yr under current system to deficit of $2,000/yr. Quintile 3 to deficit $8,970/yr. However, Quintile 5 is now better off, their savings increases from $28,000/yr to $32,600/yr.

(One caveat: the model calculates the savings or deficit with FAIRTAX by assuming that pretax income equals after tax income. If social insurance taxes still exist and come out of pretax income then the households are worse off than I described above. But I guess we're assuming medicare/SS somehow get funded some other way, not from paychecks and also not from FAIRTAX?)

Basically, as we plug different FAIRTAX rates into the model, the highest-earning households tend to do better and the lowest-earning households tend to do worse. This makes sense. High-earners pay more income tax and they spend less, relative to their income. So if you tax income less and tax spending more, that tends to be relatively better for the high-earners. For low-earners, just the opposite.

Now, I see that FAIRTAX proposal includes a "pre-bate" to lower-earner households. But the proposed pre-bate appears far too small to make any impact, based on this website which I admit I have not had time to really study.

http://fairtaxfraud.com/fallout.asp
What they don't tell you up front is that the maximum prebate per person is only $187 per month and they are only refunding the "FairTax" tax a person at the poverty level would pay.

Interestingly, it doesn't look like FAIRTAXers can avoid hurting quintiles 1-4 - i.e. leaving their Savings(Deficit)InclFAIRTAX same as the current Savings(Deficit) - simply by increasing the size of the pre-bate check. Because if you still want the government to get the same revenue from FAIRTAX despite diverting big chunks of FAIRTAX checks to quintiles 1-4, you have to raise the FAIRTAX rate to get more tax from quintile 5. But as you raise the FAIRTAX rate, you have to write even bigger checks to quintile 1-4. The problem spirals and there is no solution.

(FYI when we discussed FAIRTAX about 1 year ago, I found some skeptics' websites that claimed the true revenue neutral FAIRTAX rate would have to be over 40%. Now I see how they calculated that, and I believe they were/are right. )

IIRC, All we need is one month (qtr?) up-tic of GDP to officially end a recession ...but what about the bigger trend?

Anyway, this just in; Foreclosures rise 7 percent in July from June

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/13/AR2009081300504.html?hpid=topnews

Fresh signs of a nascent economic recovery came from hard-hit Europe on Thursday, with Germany and France unexpectedly becoming the first major industrialized nations to officially pull out of the global recession.

But note

With many analysts also predicting a "jobless recovery" in the United States, such as the one following the 2001 recession, a projected global turnaround later this year may be more visible in statistical calculations than in consumer pocketbooks around the world.

This is the consensus, conventional wisdom - that the recovery will be jobless and weak.

Because everyone is so convinced of this, it is worth thinking very hard about. How deep and hard has the fall in production, inventories, spending, investment, employment been? Have companies and consumers cut too far, too fast? Does a big decline tend to lead to a stronger recovery? What is the historical pattern, what is the mechanism behind it? Going against consensus (and being right) is often very good.

Ignorance and therefore bliss.

Example: tomorrow I'm buying a Z06 because...

1) I can't afford it - but want it.
2) Don't need it - but want it.
3) Understand it is a ridiculous waste of money - but I don't care - I want it.

That's the American historical pattern.

Yup.
The duck is right.

I just spent $1,000.00 on a rifle "just because." :-P

I'm trying to find the right upper receiver for my next AR build too.

An AR is exactly what i spent it on. It was such a deal i just couldn't resist.

Brand new Bushmaster XM-15E2S with 8 magazines, heads up display red dot sight, a case, tactical sling, and 600rds of ammo for $800.00.

Makes sweet 1 hole shot groups at 25 meters. I haven't fired it at 100m yet, but it sure as hell seems to be no more than a 1 MOA shooter given the 25m dime sized groups it shoots. Truly amazing given the fact it's a totally unmodified rifle with a 16.5" bbl.

The rest of the thousand bucks is going to be spent on Hogue overmolded furniture (the forearm is free floating), an ambi safety and trijicon night sites (I LOVE the factory sights on A2+ AR/M-16s). I won't even use the red dot, i'll probably give it to my god son for the Ruger 10/22 i'm buying him (He's 11, it's his first gun)

http://www.kymtec.com/firearms/rifle...M4A3%20145.jpg

That is a steal. I have the same rifle with different mods.

That's a damn good deal, congrats! Sounds like a winner too (and you'd know!) That's pretty accurate!