How will the payroll tax holiday help?

[LiberalFighter]

The max anyone could possible save per week would be $41.

Someone earning $50,000 a year would save $19.23 a week.

Someone earning $20,800 ($400 a week) would save $8 a week.

Is this really going to do much good for most people?

[theaocp]

1. No, but it does

help defund SS. Mission accomplished.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Exactly. (nt)

[LiberalFighter]

3. I agree that it defunds it.

Just listening to Governor Rendell talking about it being a step in the right direction. Another scumbag Democrat.

[ProSense]

6. It does not defund Social Security

It doesn't touch Social Security, not a single penny.

[bowens43]

8. head in the sand much?

we'll have a republican president, senate and house in 2012. This is the first nail in the coffin of social security..the rest will follow shortly.

[ProSense]

9. Don't insult others when you don't know what you're talking about. n/t

[valerief]

14. Details about your objections, please? Thanks in advance. nt

[sharp_stick]

23. I love it when people can see into the future like this

It's like the Amazing Kreskin 24/7 in this place.

[golfguru]

28. The problem is social security is bankrupt

as more baby boomers retire, there are fewer and fewer workers per retiree.

Social security is in surplus on book but the money has been spent, all of it!
It was spent in general budget of federal government for non-SS items. So all
the social security has a drawer full of IOU's from the US Treasury. And as
every one knows US Treasury is $13 Trillion in debt already.

So there are two choices left...1. increase payroll taxes...2. reduce benefits.
Your guess is as good as mine where we will go next.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sharp_stick]

24. It's only polite to provide evidence

when accusing somebody of outright lying. It's pretty easy to anonymously call someone all kinds of names for that matter.

[MH1]

4. $32 a month

matters to someone who is struggling to make ends meet.

Although I agree that this is a dangerous provision, and I'd rather have seen that $32 come from somewhere else.

[LiberalFighter]

10. Is it really going to help them make ends meet when they were

having difficulty to before this? At best they get paid bi-weekly and it will be $16. How many will really notice the difference and how many will have it make a difference?

[JustAnotherGen]

5. It won't

[Safetykitten]

7. It will not. The whole idea of this fiasco is to get money into pockets to SPEND! Spend away!

Then we get our new bubble.

[golfguru]

30. Nothing wrong with spending unless you are spending

BORROWED MONEY! The federal gov't is running Trillion dollar deficits
every year. So they have to borrow from China to pay you. That debt does NOT
vanish. We will be paying interest on every dollar of debt until dooms day
since we can not pay the principal.

Just in 10 more years, our interest payments will reach $1 TRILLION EVERY YEAR!

This is nothing different than spending with a credit card you have and maxing
it out even though you know you can't pay the bill on time. The interest piles
up and you end up in bankruptcy court.

[valerief]

11. It sets precedent for Congress to crack into the Social Security safe.

Precedent is like having the safe lock's combination.

I wonder how long it will take for Congress for clean out what's there, leaving Americans with little or no Social Security at all. After all, "deficit, debt, 9-11, blah, blah blah."

[stray cat]

12. Could you spend an extra 41 a week? If everyone spends it thats called stimulus

[valerief]

16. Could you take that money out of the discretionary WAR fund? Sure you could!!!!

I'd rather stimulate with THAT.

[LiberalFighter]

26. If I was making $106,800 I could spend that $41 a week.

But would I need it? Not likely.

That $41 would only be for those making $106,800 a year.

[Teaser]

13. Take a ~median of 20 dollars a week

for a median household income at $52029 (2008 data).

$80 a month.


1 extra 80 dollar Christmas gift. US has about 113,567,967 households (2009). Say only 1 person in 40 million households take advantage of it. That's 3.2 billion dollars of stimulus. Suppose they buy 1 item in this range per month. That's 38 billion dollars.

Since Krugman's casual estimate was that the stimulus was about ~100 billion dollars too low, that's nearly half of the estimated needed economic stimulus. Not quite enough, but a good start.

[valerief]

17. It's like the cost of a few weeks of WAR. nt

[Teaser]

18. no argument

but the numbers are the numbers.

[Clio the Leo]

22. That's what kills me...

.... I've read for the last year and a half here that the original stimulus was not large enough .... so now that Obama got us another one ... suddenly we're DEFICIT HAWKS!!! :rofl:

[GinaMaria]

25. Not deficit hawks just

more pragmatic. While a payroll tax holiday returns 1.29 dollars to the economy for every dollar spent, it isn't the best choice. Food stamps would be a much better stimulus, even infrastructure spending would be better. See the spending section. The UI benefits are great as a stimulus, tax cuts not so much. See below:

http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/assissing-t...

On Page 4
Table 1: Fiscal Economic Bang for the Buck
One year $ change in real GDP for a given $ reduction in federal tax revenue or increase
in spending

Tax Cuts

Non-refundable lump-sum tax rebate 1.02
Refundable lump-sum tax rebate 1.26

Temporary tax cuts

payroll tax holiday 1.29
Across the board tax cut 1.03
Accelerated depreciation 0.27

Permanent tax cuts

Extend alternative minimum tax patch 0.48
Make Bush income tax cuts permanent 0.29
Make dividend and capital gains tax cuts permanent 0.37
Cut in corporate tax rate 0.30

Spending Increases

Extending UI benefits 1.64
Temporary increase in food stamps 1.73
General aid to state governments 1.36
Increased infrastructure spending 1.59

Permanent tax cuts are the worst for the economy and return .29 - .48 cents for every dollar cut.

The real stimulus is in spending, specifically 4 types, which yield more than was paid out.

The tired old tax cut strategy is part of what made this economy so bad. More of the same isn't going to help us.

[Clio the Leo]

29. Can you get a bill offering stimulative infrastructure projects through Congress?

... sure, seems to be a no brainer .... but is that something John "Teeny Weeny Government" would be in favor of?

Because that's what pragmatism means in this context .... not what we'd like to do, but what we CAN do.

[GinaMaria]

32. Pragmatism means fact-based decision making

that's the no brainer here.

[Clio the Leo]

19. $8 a week is a trip to Starbucks that I might not otherwise take...

.... which help keeps Starbucks open .... which helps keeps the UPS trucks running .... helps those dudes that makes those lil' cardboard sleeve thingies stay in business, helps keep the paper company in business and on an on.

You can poo poo Starbucks as a bougie example, but that's the basic idea. It snowballs.


Anyway, when did Dems decide we disliked the concept of an economic stimulus .... I missed that meeting.

[Thrill]

20. That's gas for many people

It might not be much for you. But I'm sure some people who are struggling it helps a lot.

[Cleita]

21. You know what would work better?

Raise minimum wage another dollar an hour. It would give people more spending money and it also would add P/R tax revenue to SS and Medicare. I know Wal-Mart and other employers would have a hissy fit, but they would have to find ways to make it work. It seems like we need some better economists setting policy.

[Ozymanithrax]

27. Multiply $10.00 X 150 million X the number of paychecks.

Now, that money is spent in the economy.

This bill is not about helping individuals. That small amount will be spent rather than saved and go directly into the economy on a paycheck by paycheck basis.

This isn't about helping individuals. It is about putting money directly into the economy. So at that level, 1.5 billion dollars about every two weeks gets added to the nations economy. In $10.00 increments it is insignificant. But across the whole nation, it is not.

The question remains, is it enough of a stimulus. Krugman is on record as saying that though it is a stimulus, it is not enough.

This is not about helping individuals, it is about stimulating the entire nation's economy.

[elleng]

31. Yes, as 'most people' need whatever.

[ProudDad]

33. It won't!

But for the first time in the history of the program...

It uses Social Security funding as a bargaining chip...

It puts the entire program on the chopping block by conflating what should be a completely autonomous SOCIAL INSURANCE PROGRAM as a mythical mechanism for "economic stimulus"...

And directly links Social Security Funding with the General Fund and the Debt...

No more "lock box" concept...

It's the camel's nose under the tent flap...

And the appeaser-in-chief is now using republican language by calling it "an entitlement"...

Anyone who thinks that that "payroll deduction" will be restored or the lost income to the SS system "made up" is deluded...

And the drum beat has already begun...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x567211

[ProudDad]

34. It's the ENVIRONMENT, IDIOTS!

You can't have an economy on a dead planet...

You're NOT going to be able to "grow your way" out of this one!

Humans have already overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth!

"August 21st marks an unfortunate milestone: the day in which we exhaust our ecological budget for the year. Once we pass this day, humanity will have demanded all the ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food – that nature can provide this year. From that point until the end of the year, we meet our ecological demand by liquidating resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

You can pretend that Obama and the execrable minions of the corpos in the government have any real power but...

The truth is you can't ignore the laws of physics...

Toward the end of the last century humans began consuming muscle tissue since there WAS NO MORE FAT LEFT TO CONSUME...!!!

So no matter what fiddling with details the major offenders do in their halls of "government", Mother Nature bats last...