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Here is your open thread for the weekend beginning Friday December 28th, 2012. You may post random links and off-topic discussions here. Also, if you have an idea or a topic you’d like to see covered in an article, please make it known.
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OK, So Seattle Falls Off the Fiscal Cliff This Tuesday
What does it mean?
For the bottom 95% of household incomes….at least 2% more out of their gross pay to get their Social Security full funded again. About 3% of net pay decrease.
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RE: softwarengineer @ 1 – That’s one part of the fiscal cliff I can easily live with since I was against that “holiday” in the first place. Also, I’m not even sure it affects me. Did self-employed people get a break on that?
But you’re right that will kick in immediately. The IRS won’t have the new withholding rules in place right away for the income tax, but my understanding is the SS tax withholding will go up right away.
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RE: softwarengineer @ 1 – Apparently it could delay getting tax refunds too.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/28/news/economy/tax-refund/
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 3 –
They May Cancel All Tax Refunds
Then if you don’t fund healthcare this year at like $16K/yr for a family plan; the IRS can grab your refund as a healthcare tax [per Supreme Court interpertation], err, uhhh, I really meant healthcare noncompliance fine.
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 2 –
I’m With You Kary
It doesn’t matter if its Social Security or a sound 401K for retirement; we put in both options more than we’ll ever need before death [we have no idea how long we'll live] to retire.
So if we put in more than we’ll spend, does that mean the feds can transfer from the banks and rob the 401K cookie jars too, they emptied the SS one, why not? LOL
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RE: softwarengineer @ 5 – At least one eastern European country has already raided its citizens’ pension fund accounts. I fully expect the same thing to happen here and don’t plan on ever being able to retire. I’m not complaining, though, as I’ve got it far better than most people on the planet.
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By redmondjp @ 6:
Since you don’t mind having your property stolen, would you kindly give us your address and leave the key out front?
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WTF! The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security colluding with Wall Street to monitor and control American citizens! How can you argue that the USA is not a fascist police state? Obama sucks!!
FOIA Documents Reveal How FBI Spied On OWS
“These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America,” Verheyden-Hilliard said.
http://www.infowars.com/foia-documents-reveal-how-fbi-spied-on-ows
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RE: redmondjp @ 6 – I’m far more pessimistic about the future of this country than ever before in my lifetime. Politicians have discovered how to keep the masses happy–spend lots and lots of money they don’t have. It not only creates a burden for the future, but it also likely inhibits private economic activity to some extent because the government is sucking billions of dollars out of the economy. Even worse, it creates a population of citizens totally reliant on the government. I doubt we’ll recognize this country in 10-12 years unless the trend changes.
In the past I’ve said I was for the stimulus, but thought it should have been larger and more concentrated in time (shorter). I’m afraid it’s become permanent!
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By redmondjp @ 6:
I don’t understand why. SS is fully funded for about basically forever. even when it’s supposedly bankrupt it still can pay 75% of promised benefits.
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 9:
I don’t follow at all. the stimulus ended in 2009 for all intents and purposes.
this is probably the only time in your lifetime when not cutting back on government spending has it’s greatest affect. the US economy is deep into deleveraging. we’re $1 trillion below potential GDP. the natural rate of unemployment is 4 or 5 pecentage points below this. we are spending a lot on people because they don’t have jobs. when the jobs come back the spending automatically goes away.
literally the opposite of everything you said is actually happening.
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The Final Datapoints Of The Year Show The Economy Is Gathering Steam
Read more: http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2012/12/weekly-indicators-finish-year-strongly.html#ixzz2GTHtSTHm
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By pfft @ 11:
I’m not talking about just one or two programs. I consider massive deficit spending and QE to be stimulus. Also, if it’s ended, why are we talking about the SS tax holiday ending in a couple of days? Was there a purpose to the tax holiday other than to stimulate the economy?
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By Kary L. Krismer @ 9:
Is that some kind of crack about AIG, GM, and every large bank, oil company and defense contractor?
I guess corporations really are people after all.
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RE: whatsmyname @ 14 – That’s the sort of short term stimulus I don’t really have a problem with. Unfortunately, even there the long term outlook is bad. Absolutely nothing has been done to end the problem of “too big to fail.” If anything, they’ve been actually encouraged to get bigger.
Forty plus years ago the government broke up AT&T because they thought the price of phone service was too high. Before that they broke up Chevron because of the impact on prices for gasoline (and other products). Both those probably impacted the average family’s budget maybe $2 a month in their dollars, if that. But we have companies which almost caused the entire economy to collapse, causing an incredible loss of wealth together with very high unemployment, and what do we do? Next to nothing.
(BTW, that argument probably doesn’t apply to GM, especially on the breaking it up issue.)
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RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 15 – Who has the power?
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RE: pfft @ 10 – That is correct from an accounting perspective. But recall that imbecile Obama threatened SS payments during the last budget impasse. How could he do that as the SS Trust Fund had over a $2 trillion surplus? SS payments are made these days through the issuance of debt. And if the PTB want to lessen debt issuance, they will lower the amount of SS payments due to the people. We must continue to increase defense spending. Obama sucks.
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Perhaps my next website should be LegoBubble.com.
USA Today: Lego investors make hot profits brick by brick
Yeah, that sounds sustainable.
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RE: The Tim @ 18 – Just like the real estate market. Tim. The good news is that the buyers are using their own money, hopefully are not leveraged with phony mortgages “guaranteed” by the taxpayers and the Federal Reserve is not manipulating the prices they pay at the expense of the taxpayers. Maybe the Fed is waiting until their bubble collapses to do that? Unfortunately being almost the only buyer means you will need a lot of fools to take those sets off your hands to sell. Perhaps they can recruit Lawrence Yun and David Lereah as pitchmen to bring in the sheep for the slaughter?
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RE: The Tim @ 18 –
When my kids were smaller they were really into Lego Bionicles. Each character had a limited shelf life and if they wanted one that was no longer available in stores I turned to eBay to pay a few bucks more for the item. I don’t think there was a speculative market there but I was definitely willing to pay $12 instead of $8 to get a discontinued item – most were still new and in box. Seems like a terrible plan to save for a child’s college though.
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