Fixing Social Security

Stephen Moore has another insightful look at the GOP’s unwillingness to take on the necessary task of allowing people to have some control over their own retirement funds.

KMK

Terrorist Charities

I have frequently discussed how inefficient it is to donate money to a middleman charity, such as United Way, rather than directly to the organizations doing the real life charitable work. Even more important is the fact that those middlemen charities often pass your money on to groups that go completely against your personal beliefs.

A perfect example is PETA, which has been using some of its donations to fund outright violent terrorism. As an IRS certified charity, any political activity is technically illegal. However, with Clinton cronies still in charge of the upper levels of the IRS, there is little chance that they will be punished for this.

KMK

More Realistic Look At Tax Law Changes

I have ranted & raved for decades about how unrealistic are the analyses by our rulers in DC of the effects of tax law changes. They are always completely wrong, mostly because they use static analysis, which assumes that the real people in the country won’t alter their behavior any in response to tax law changes. It’s absolute garbage and only useful for the demagogues to do their own ranting & raving against letting people keep any more of their own money. Those are the imbeciles who, still to this day, blame the huge budget deficits on the Reagan tax rate cuts, when with perfect 20/20 hindsight, it is clear that those cuts stimulated the economy and generated twice as much in tax revenues as there would have been with the previous higher rates. Real life facts mean nothing to those people.

It has been a long uphill battle to convince our rulers to use a dynamic method of guessing future numbers, taking into account that people will change what they do as tax laws change, such as more business activity when rates are lowered. Now, it seems that some of our rulers will be looking at dynamic figures in addition to the worthless static ones that the liberals prefer. While this is definitely a step in the right direction, it must be pointed out that even the dynamic scoring models are nothing more than guesstimates. Changing from static to dynamic analysis will really be no different than changing from the WAG (wild ass guess) to SWAG (scientific wild ass guess) technique of financial forecasting. To date, nobody has come up with a truly accurate crystal ball to predict future government finances; which is why it will still grate on my nerves to hear people cite official government forecasts as if they are gospel.

KMK

Pyramid Schemes

Whether you call it a chain letter, a pyramid plan, or a gifting party, the concept is exactly the same. The first group of people will usually make some money, and then the supply of suckers dries up and the latecomers are out thousands of dollars.

There are technically laws against these kinds of scams, supposedly to protect the idiots walking among us. I’m a big believer in the Darwinism of finances and consider the rip-off to be a pretty effective punishment for being mortally stupid.

KMK

Slow But Steady?

Again, Bruce Bartlett is more optimistic than I am about Bush’s commitment to lowering taxes. He thinks Bush is just being patient and taking his time to build an overall consensus for tax cuts, in the same manner as he’s doing to round up support for the war on Iraq.

Maybe Bush is timing things for the two months at the end of the year when the GOP will control the Senate if Missouri can actually elect a living Republican instead of a dead Democrat, as they did two years ago.

KMK

Creative Way To Make A Point

Here’s a group that came up with a creative way to illustrate their displeasure with the huge amounts of pork in the Federal budget, a rolling porkermobile.

In a perfect example of beauty being in the eye of the beholder, I can’t say that I can agree with what this Socialist group, TrueMajority, considers to be pork and what is necessary government spending. They want to cut the defense department fat and move it to welfare programs, for a net savings to the taxpayers of exactly zero.

I have to take a hard line approach on this. If it’s not something that is authorized by the US Constitution, then the Federal government has no right to spend any money on it. Defense of the nation is the number one responsibility of the Feds. Welfare is not something our founding fathers wanted the central government being involved in.

KMK

2002 California Tax Rates

The FTB has issued a revised tax rate schedule for 2002 individual income taxes. It’s difficult to find on the FTB website, so I have uploaded the pdf file with the updated 2002 tax rates to my site. There is also a link to this schedule on my main website. I noticed several searches for it over the past few weeks.

I want to thank the fine people at Spidell Publishing for sending me the pdf file. They have long been the premier authority on taxes in the PRC.

KMK

Double Taxation

Bruce Bartlett is absolutely correct that the system of taxing profits from C corporations twice (first at the corporate level and again as dividend income to the shareholders) is completely immoral. The fair thing to do would be to either eliminate corporate income tax altogether or make dividend income tax free. That’s not likely to happen, given the popularly held belief that corporations are inherently evil and not worthy of any tax breaks whatsoever.

Just a reminder, this is really only a problem with very large corporations that have a lot of shareholders who are not involved in the operation of the business. For small closely held corporations, it is easy to avoid double taxation by paying the shareholders in ways that are deductible expenses for the corporation, such as salaries, leases and royalties.

KMK

Nailing Scam Protestors

Lew Rockwell has ticked off many in the tax protestor movement by saying the exact same things I have always said; that they are idiot scammers whose advice will land you in the pokey.

KMK

Too Much Truth

Just when you think the GOP has sprouted a backbone and is willing to step up to the plate on serious issues such as the Social Security scam, they wimp out again. As I have explained on several occasions, one of the fundamental methods for the SS system to be able to stay at least partially solvent is for beneficiaries to die before receiving any payouts. That was why the official retirement age was originally established as 65 when the average life expectancy was just 57, when the SS system was established in the 1930s. Most people are supposed to pay into the imaginary trust fund throughout their working lives, and then kick the bucket before taking any money out. The unclaimed funds are not considered to be part of the decedent’s estate and are essentially forfeited. This is why self controlled accounts are so much fairer.

Certain ethnic groups are known to have lower life expectancies than others, making the scam even worse for them. However, it isn’t politically correct to actually point out this fact. Using the term “reverse reparations” may have been a bit over the edge; but it is technically correct. GOPAC has caved in to the PC Police and is shelving their ads on this point. And it looks like the entire GOP is again chickening out from even discussing any changes to Social Security, especially any mention of private control.

KMK