Rivalarrival
@Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
- Comment on Play games with your neighbor to sink even lower! Canada rules! 1 day ago:
Why trade with Canada when we can just start a war?
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 day ago:
Show me a financial advisor making the same point I just made. If the tax code says I can get a $22,000 refund simply by claiming to have earned $184,500 instead of a lower number, every financial advisor in the country will have done the math on what I just estimated. There should be a range of income that a taxpayer should never claim.
If what you are saying is true, either do the math yourself, or find the financial advisor who has done the math, and tell me the break even point. The exact point where the additional taxes I pay (by falsely claiming greater income) will equal the ~$22,000 of social security tax you think the government will refund me.
If this were actually true, it would be the largest tax loophole accessible to the middle class. This supposed loophole approaches the value of a small car, each and every year.
Do me a favor: run that worksheet on $174,500 income, $184,500 income, and $194,500 income. Show me that the final self employment tax deduction for each of those three scenarios supports your argument.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 2 days ago:
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 2 days ago:
Reading your arguments, you’re claiming that if I earn $184,499, I owe $22,000 in social security tax, because I don’t put a zero on line 9 of page 9 of the self employment tax deduction worksheet.
But if I earn $184,501, the IRS is going to give me a $22,000 refund for exceeding the social security wage cap.
By your argument, if I’m actually making about $120,000, I should just claim to have earned $184,500. After paying taxes on the missing $64,500, I’d still come out ahead.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 2 days ago:
What is the title of the form? Right up at the top of the page, it has a title. What is that title?
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 2 days ago:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Wage_Base
Your claim arises not from a calculation on how much social security tax can be claimed. It comes from misreading a worksheet calculating deductions from self employment tax. You’re seeing a “zero” entry on one line of that worksheet and claiming it means you don’t pay social security taxes. You don’t seem to realize that the deduction calculates how much social security tax you pay, and increases the deduction based on that amount.
When you reach $184,500 of income, you do not pay any additional social security tax. You don’t pay any social security tax on the additional income above $184,500. You do pay social security tax on the income up to and including $184,500.
If you follow the worksheet, it will only allow you to deduct the amount of social security tax you actually pay, which means you are not allowed to deduct any additional social security tax on income over $184,500.
- Comment on Good luck dickhead 5 days ago:
This video, full volume, on a loop, on every screen in the house.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 5 days ago:
People will take issue with one person needing 12 years of schooling or having to work in awful conditions, that will be making the same as someone driving a forklift around a warehouse all day.
That statement does not describe UBI.
The doctor and the forklift driver will receive the same UBI check, as will an unemployed person. The doctor will also receive a paycheck from an employer for their labor. The forklift driver will also receive a paycheck from an employer for their labor. The unemployed person will only receive the UBI check.
Imagine the country as a publicly traded company, where each citizen holds exactly one share of common stock. Imagine that company pays a monthly dividend on that share. That “Citizenship Dividend” is UBI. Just because you are a “shareholder” doesn’t mean that check is your sole source of income. That check is not the compensation for your labor. That check is the compensation for the government’s use of your political authority in a democratic system.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 5 days ago:
The “volunteer” comment was rebutting the idea that there would be no productivity in a society where money is irrelevant. UBI is not a replacement of compensation for work.
Presently, the first ~$16,000 you earn through labor are not gainful. That income provides your basic subsistence. You pretty much have to spend that much just to keep yourself alive in our economy. The remainder of your income is consider “gainful”.
UBI doesn’t replace compensation for labor. UBI provides that subsistence income. UBI means that every dollar you earn through your own labor is gainful. Your subsistence needs for the week are met before you leave for work on Monday.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 5 days ago:
When people are retired, as per your comment to which he replied, they are not going to work much. You can not call it retirement when people work (roughly) as much as they do now.
Here is the full text of the comment you are referring to:
Enough to lower the social security age from 67 years to 6-7 weeks gestational age. Remove the cap, include cap gains, and UBI becomes a thing.
“Retired” was not “per [my] comment” but from the “comment to which he replied”. I didn’t use the word; the other person did.
I referred to the new, social security system as “UBI”. Universal Basic Income. Also known as a “Citizenship Dividend”. When we remove the caps, and tax capital gains as well as income, the “social security age” is no longer the age at which someone retires, but the age at which they initially join society.
- Comment on An impossible choice 1 week ago:
I think I saw that movie.
- Comment on YUM 1 week ago:
Nah. They are Mt. Olive. Not even Vlasic, let alone something actually edible.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
Umm… No? The monthly amount you receive is based on your earnings, yes. However (And please correct me if I’m wrong) the benefit continues until the death of you and any qualified person (spouse, ex spouse, minor children, disabled children, disabled parent) who survives you. You and/or they could be collecting that benefit on your 150th birthday.
Alternatively, if you die before retiring, without qualified survivors, social security pays nothing to you or your estate.
It’s not a “fund”. That is a pension, or a retirement insurance program. The taxes that pay for it are premium payments.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
That’s fine. The tree of liberty could use some refreshing.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
That form does not calculate social security tax. It calculates an estimated self employment tax. None of the numbers on that page are the amount of tax owed in social security. Lines 5-9 are calculating how much additional tax you can deduct because you are paying social security tax on the first 184.5K of your income. When your income exceeds 184.5k, you are not paying additional social security tax, so you are not entitled to a greater deduction against your self-employment tax.
- Comment on This unclickable X 1 week ago:
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
The thing is, if everyone’s retired and nobody’s working,
Where do you get the idea that nobody is working with UBI?
UBI isn’t supposed to be your entire, or even your primary source of income. The most basic concept of UBI is supposed to be enough for a roof over your head, rice and beans in your belly, and that’s about it. It’s supposed to cover the absolute essentials, not your entire lifestyle. It is supposed to remove the desperation of subsistence.
When a man is drowning, he’ll do anything to survive. When his lungs start filling with water, he’ll drown his wife and kids just for one more breath of air. When a worker is desperate, they will take any work on any exploitative terms that are offered, just to put a meal in their belly. That desperation drags down wages and conditions for everyone. The fundamental purpose of UBI is to ensure that even the most desperate among us aren’t forced into exploitation, and in doing so, drag everyone down with them.
There is no shortage of labor. We have a massive excess of labor. We have so much labor available that even though everybody currently needs to work, wages are so low that nobody has any money to spend on anything but essentials. The economy is stagnating because everybody is working, but nobody is buying anything.
UBI is a long-term solution to this untenable situation.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
You misread the IRS form that you think demonstrates that. It is not doing anything of the sort.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
They pay social security taxes on the first 184k/yr. They do not pay taxes on that part of their income above 184k.
They do, actually, receive social security checks, regardless of income or need, beginning at (or before) the age of 70. Since they’ve been paying in the maximum, they are receiving the maximum benefit, $4152 per month, rather than the median benefit of $2083 per month.
You are wrong on both counts.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
Yeah? Cars replaced horses for most Americans.
The mechanism of operation is so different that they cannot be considered the same thing. Even though they are used for similar purposes, they are not reasonably comparable.
- Comment on This Avocado Oil that claims to be “0 Calories” 🙄 1 week ago:
and only a fraction of that would actually end up on the food.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
I disagree with the “based on need”. That’s “means testing”, and converts the program from a simple social entitlement program into charity. It immediately builds in resentment for “successful” people being compelled to support “failures”. Means Testing is the underlying problem that creates and systematically oppresses the poverty class.
Social security should be provided equally to every person of “retirement age”, regardless of need or whether they have actually retired or are continuing to work.
Social Security should be moving toward becoming Universal Basic Income.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
A pension is not a retirement fund either, from the perspective of the worker and the worker’s family. A pension is paid to the worker for the remainder of the worker’s life, regardless of the amount the worker has paid into the fund. If they put in 20 years worth of payments and live 40 years, they collect 40 years of payments. If they live only two months, they only collect two months of payments.
I would agree that social security is comparable to a pension or retirement insurance, in that the payout is not necessarily commensurate with the pay-in.
A 401k is a fund. If the worker puts in 20 years of payments, and only lives two months, the worker’s heirs receive 19 years and 10 months worth of payments.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
It’s not savings of any sort. The remainder of your savings goes to your heirs when you die. If you don’t have a spouse, or minor children or disabled adult children, and you die before collecting all of your contributions, you and your estate forfeit 100% of the remainder.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
Social security is not a retirement fund.
If I have an actual retirement fund that I contribute to every month for my entire adult life, and I die the year before I retire, the entirety of that retirement fund goes into my estate. It is ultimately bequeathed to my legal heirs.
If I die a year before collecting social security, my heirs will get nothing of what I paid in. The government keeps that money, and pays it out to other social security beneficiaries. (I am not married, and my children are over 19 and not disabled.)
A pension, maybe, but Social Security is in no way comparable to a retirement fund.
- Comment on Social Security can be saved. Scrap the cap! 1 week ago:
Enough to lower the social security age from 67 years to 6-7 weeks gestational age.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione sacrificed his freedom for Nothing. 1 week ago:
Not publicly.
- Comment on Luigi Mangione sacrificed his freedom for Nothing. 1 week ago:
I’m betting the state prosecutors feared not just the possibility, but the likelihood of jury nullification, and begged the feds to make a deal.
- Comment on How to deal with people who obtusely miss your point on Lemmy? 1 week ago:
Your 🌭 is a 🐐.
- Comment on How to deal with people who obtusely miss your point on Lemmy? 1 week ago:
Respond with a couple of emojis. No actual text. Doesn’t particularly matter what emojis you choose, just pick a couple at random. The more obscure the better.
If they aren’t going to bother reading what you wrote, let them try to find meaning in 🥔🗑️.
