From: http://teapartyeconomist.com
Many workers surprised by hike in payroll taxes
The mainstream media are filled with stories about the surprise experienced by American workers this month. Social Security'’s FICA tax will rise by two percentage points this year.
Someone making $50,000 will pay an extra $1,000.
What’s this? You mean lunches are not free? You mean somebody has to pay for granny'’s retirement? Will wonders never cease? Of course, the present value of the gap between the promises made by the government and the taxes expected to be collected is now $222 trillion for Social Security and Medicare. But this does not faze Congress. Congress will deal with that later. For now, two percentage points will have to do.
This supposedly will reduce the growth in the economy by one-half of one percent. Why do Keynesian economists believe this? The money taken out of workers’ paychecks will be spent by the government. It will go to oldsters. They will spend it.
Tax hikes redistribute wealth. They rob from the victims and buy votes from the recipients. But Keynesian theory says that government spending gooses the economy. It amazes me that Keynesians think that this tax hike will reduce economic growth.
Workers are inside the can that Congress has kicked down the road again. They are getting a foretaste of taxes to come, or inflation to come, or both.
At some point, there will be a tax revolt. Then granny will find herself short of funds. She will call on her family to make up the difference.
Families have not budgeted for that, either.......
PN blogger comments: Ah, Keynesian economics. Isn't it lovely -- governments at most any level (literally from dogcatcher through co-President) get to spend, spend, spend and when the well runs dryish, the answer is to tax, tax, tax more than they were already doing. Do you know, with this kind of logic, children could be running their own adult businesses such as candy shops -- they and their kiddie buddies could throw the doors open to all comers and everybody could eat candy till they were falling into massive sugar shock, and if they ran out, they could pass a law that all citizens had to turn in candy they had at home to keep up the brats' giving and feasting habits!
It may seem an extreme analogy, but where is it not exactly parallel to how these suits, these gloriously-credentialed nobodies that are actually running governments and their treasuries, are doing their job? Don't tell me the reality of what goes on in Washington or your average state capitol is one bit different in modus operandi or philosophy!
THIS is life in your glorious vaunted Republican revolution! All hail the exalted "R"-race, our saviors from everything evil except fire ants and ring around the collar.... I saw in a brilliant piece via the magnificent lewrockwell.com an ancient Roman maxim, "wars teach geography". Isn't that priceless -- aside from the fact that many of "our" troops are probably incapable of finding the countries they're fighting in on a map?
Maybe depressions teach real-world economic theory -- naaah, not to the TV- and -antidepressant addicted Amurrican sheeple. They'll look up what latitude and longitude Lower Volta is found at before they face the magnitude of such swindles as income taxes and Social Insecurity. Pardon my jaundice....
That was merely a pundit greater than myself commenting on a "new" reality we've covered before here -- but when Gary North opines, all of us should give a listen and watch our minds expand. Our next story is from a country more civilized than the vaunted Newnited States of Anomica, but one that is sinking fast into the Anomican model of existence:
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/12/business/spain-home-evictions/index.html
Spanish banks stop evictions for the next 2 years in cases of 'extreme necessity'
How about that? In the USA we've seen reports of a US city doing likewise here and there -- haven't we? -- but in Europe a whole country is capable of putting extreme cases of dispossession-into-dire-poverty on hold for two whole years! Remember, please -- the money spent on bank bailouts in the US could have paid off every mortgage in the country.
This news comes, however, at a price. The new policy is born of the self-martyrdom of two citizens:
Spaniards who are in "circumstances of extreme necessity" and are unable to pay their mortgages will not be evicted from their homes over the next two years, the main industry group for Spanish banks said Monday.
The pledge comes just
three days after a 53-year-old woman committed suicide as authorities
were preparing to foreclose on her home. It was the second such incident
since late October.
The move will not halt
all home evictions during the ongoing economic crisis, but the Spanish
Banking Association issued a statement saying that "due to social alarm
generated by the home evictions," it agreed with a government proposal
made last Thursday to halt foreclosures "during the next two years, in
those cases where there are circumstances of extreme necessity."
In the incident last
Friday, the woman jumped to her death from her home in northern Spain as
authorities were climbing the steps to evict her.
The victim was a former
Socialist town councilor. Her death followed the suicide last October 25
by a 53-year-old man who hanged himself at a home in southern Spain
shortly before the eviction team -- judicial and bank representatives,
backed by police -- showed up......
This revelation is when even yours truly is overtaken with misery. I'm even willing to mourn a "former socialist town councilor" if the poor woman saw no other way out -- felt had nobody to turn to. Is there a chance that this pitiful turn of events cures anybody in her life or the socialist "community" of their utopian madness? One must hope so.
Let's finish lighter. Dig these crazy, often funny real-life stories from the great (if too smutty) nuttynewstoday! Read them there too, with source article links, then click "Older entries" at bottom of NNT's homepage, starting with my favorite (be warned, these reality reports often involve gross or indecent behavior):
Programmer outsourced his job to China
Robber Wore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pajamas
Bookmark and ShareTwo strippers fight over dollar bill
Coffin with built-in speakers linked to a music playlist, can be updated by the living
Man asked for help in loading stolen Walmart TV into car
Man Was Too Drunk To Pull Off Robbery (he smirks in his mug shot!)
Bookmark and ShareAmateur prospector finds massive gold nugget
Woman glues 24,0000-piece puzzle to living room wall
Hope you have a great, happy, prosperous day today -- all day. You who missed Friday's PN fun, jam-packed meeting in Greenville, we'll forgive you this time, but don't let it happen again. ;-} One attendee ingeniously sweetened the pot when the hat was passed for contributions: at a discount shop in Simpsonville, he'd nabbed some Lindt milk chocolate bunnies at a great low price and offered them "free" to anybody who contributed $5 at the meeting to the PN's general operating expenses. Creativity like that is what helps these meetings to continue from month to month, and we salute attendee Rick Dale for making many similar offers through the years, often at a greater price to himself than on this occasion.
I ate my bunny so fast that I (still being on the road) had to atone for it by ordering a roughage-filled Joey Bag at Moe's Southwest Grill on Saturday.
/\/.\/\/. torpenhow@charter.net
No comments:
Post a Comment