You are making the assumption that so-called red states aren’t doing well, or as well as blue states, and I don’t know if this is the case or not.
From the debt/unfunded pension obligation side, most of the states in the worst shape are blue - MA, MI, FL, PA, OH, IL, NJ, TX, NY, and CA are the 10 worst, only TX is solidly red. OH is mixed and the rest are pretty solidly blue.
So maybe the increased success of the blue states is due in part to borrowing from the future.
@kelsmom
My understanding is that the Senate bill does not tax graduate students for the tuition waivers that accompany teaching and research assistants, so @romanigypsyeyes , you and my kids ok with the Senate bill.
The Senate bill does appear to tax the tuition waivers that universities give to their employees, and that is probably what is being discussed in financial aid circles. These waivers will be considered taxable income to those employees. I believe this has always been the case in some instances. MIT has this deal where they pay 1/2 the tuition anywhere. When I was in graduate school my advisor’s ex-wife got to use this benefit in full for their kids and he got the tax bill in full for himself. l guess for the professors whose kids went to their own employer’s school, that benefit wasn’t taxed before.
@notrichenough Great point. I failed to consider that when I made the comment. The underfunded state pension obligations is a ticking time bomb.
@notrichenough, a donation to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a charitable donation. I was trying to avoid using too many words and overwhelming the quotation. But fair enough point, particularly since it isn’t the only way to offer money to the government for its use.
I’m done discussing this little aside, though—it’s a distraction from the fact that a group of quite wealthy people have made an explicit request to not have their taxes reduced (in fact, requesting to increase them), and further have said that tax reductions for the wealthy are a bad idea for the country. Trying to distract from that fact by critiquing them for an assumed (assumed without evidence, BTW) non-action does an interesting job of sidestepping the economic claims made by people who have been fabulously economically successful.
Let’s see,… George Soros. Hmmm, is his hedge fund still based in Ireland for the favorable tax treatment? Ah, that’s right, he moved it to the Caymans.
This isn’t correct for people with pensions. Pension funds own a decent amount of stock, and depend upon the higher long term returns of stocks in order to fund their pensioners.
Honestly, that seems the definition of trickle down. Give away massive amounts of money to others, expand the deficit to an idiotic degree, but hey, some of us might make a leeeetle bit more on our pensions.
Even if the Senate bill doesn’t have the tuition waiver tax, my taxes are still going up. But hey, at least it probably won’t bankrupt me.
But @kelsmom says it is in there, too .
@dfbdfb yes it is indisputably true that a group of self-proclaimed wealthy people have publicized a letter in which they are advocating for higher taxes on wealthy people.
The group that put out this letter has been around for 20 years and rolls out one of these letters whenever tax cuts are being talked about. I personally don’t find it all that impressive, let alone being some sort of mandate from the 1%.
Not many people left with pensions anymore, especially people who are middle aged or younger. Sadly.
@busdriver11 exactly, which is why so many are no longer middle class. I always say my parents who retired from union jobs, with pensions and healthcare, will have a much better retirement even though we make more money than they did.
It’s completely disingenuous. What would be useful is if they made a push to get rid of carried interest, and to tax all income the same as earned income. That would be a shock. Any bets on that ever happening?
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. 8-|
I could get behind this, with a couple of caveats.
Carried interest is a boondoggle, get rid of it.
NPR says it is just the house version for the grad school waiver tax change, too.
I’m pretty sure that is really where it sits right now (House removes the tax break, Senate does not say anything about it). But no one knows what the final bill will contain.
I’m curious, where are all the tax savings with getting rid of the individual mandate. Most people have employer based insurance and with all of this uncertainty anyone on the individual market is seeing premiums increase.
That’s on you. What has stopped you from saving and investing all of this extra money? What did you spend it on?
@notrichenough you need to pump your brakes. I never said I haven’t saved. I said they would enjoy a better retirement. Defined benefit plans are always better than defined contribution plans. If you retire and your healthcare is covered with little to no premiums, housing was reasonable, college tuition was reasonable at 3k/year when I attended, and you have a pension, yes you will enjoy a very good retirement. My husband and I could have one bad illness and be tossed into bankruptcy since neither of us will retire from companies that offer insurance to retirees.
As a matter of fact they both have pensions, 401ks and get social security, along with employer health insurance , so yes they enjoy a better retirement.
Not speaking for partyof5, but I’d guess higher cost of living, much higher taxes, far higher cost of college. It costs more to live the same, and as you make a higher salary via earned income, you get the pants taxed off of you.
I still have a pension, as does my husband, fortunately…but to get an annuity that would pay out like our pension, we’d have to save many millions of dollars. Solid pensions are worth far more than most people can save.
The tax savings come at the expense of people dropping health insurance.
Since the people without company-paid health plans tend to work in jobs that don’t pay very much, this group sees large subsidies from the government. If these people don’t get insurance, they don’t get subsidies, and gov’t spending drops.
It’s a considerable amount - the numbers I saw said $340 billion over 10 years.
The reduction in spending helps the tax cut bill get under the $1.5 Trillion/10 years benchmark.
@busdriver11 you were responding as I was. Anyone with half a brain knows that a union DB plan is way better than a DC Plan. You get it because you are living it. I have no idea why @notrichenough extrapolated from my statement that I’m some careless person not planning for my retirement. You are absolutely correct, I could never afford to buy an annuity that would pay out what my parents get monthly, and have anything left over for medical expenses.