(Must disseminate this image EVERYWHERE!!!)

social security, and foreign aid especially

but FICA on 50k should be around $3825 if you work for a company that matches your payment, or $7650 if you're an independent contractor or small business owner. (7.65% and 15.3% respectively.)

It would be nice to see that on the chart just to shut them the fuck up.

It's a very small expense, but they need to see exactly how small.

The reason they left out SS is because it is a larger number and would offset the "punch" of the $4000 in corporate subsidy. The idea behind posters like this one is to draw attention to the thing that stands out. If they added a line that said:

YOUR Social Security $3500 (or whatever the exact amount)

it would steal the thunder from the

Corporate Subsidies $4000

FICA is money that is returned directly to us.

Now that's a bunch of very stupid people who let that happen.

That is the question I have always had?

Or, so I surmise. Disagreeing with the boss, politically, is unwise for those who want job security.



-Laelth

They see themselves as the provincial versions of the 1%, and possibly are the 1% in their town.

So they better support policies that help the rich so someday they can enjoy the benefits of it too.

and although I normally can visualize where someone is coming from and understand their motivations, in these cases I don't understand how a blue collar middle american person can be persuaded that he has anything in common with some rich asshole making $100M for sitting behind a desk.

I was a small town kid who used my dad's VA benefits to go on to the state university. I had good grades and that took me to Washington DC where my salary (over a 10 year period) went from 15K a year to 60K with overtime that more than doubled it. That was the 90s so some of the jumps in salary were merit based while some were lock-step when the firms raised salaries to attract folks. Many new graduates with private or public ivy degrees (above 3.0) were going to dot coms and they needed to compete.

So, it was possible. Did it happen for a lot of folks? Other than those who worked hard (as I did with the OT) - and that often included IT dept's as well, or early stock-options from some of those dot.coms .... I would think it was a finite bunch and many of us used some of those savings in the next decade as we started getting laid off etc.

Is it possible today to have those kind of dreams? Not nearly as likely with the gap growing so wide between rich & poor and the cut-backs continuing in both the public and private sectors. I think historically folks will look back at the 90s and dot.com emergence as a bit of an anomoly.

The rich are the source of all of the information the Limbeciles receive. they are completely brainwashed.

The rw would say many of those things actually are welfare.

anyway they want. Defense spending is insane, to me

the Federal School Lunch Program AND W.I.C.!

There's a small grant to states to run their TANF programs.

There would be much more than $4700.00 in fed takings for 50 grand income.

than illustrated here. I would like to see the source and other figures. However, I agree with the meme...it does indicate where our "welfare" payments go...corporations reap much more than the "welfare queens" the right loves to hate.

I make 50k, pay $2868 to Social Security every year. Medicare tax is 670 a year. After taxes and all deductions I take home about 36k.

pays back to those who have paid into the Trust (separate account), or to those who are totally disabled.

eventually they will get nothing maybe that works for them.

doubt I'll get a reply but I feel better in sending this to them.

Good job!

eom

You're doing a lot better than I am.

It's really no different making 50 as it is making 35, I used to get tax returns for 5-6k because of the EIC when I made less, now I pay 5,000 every year. That right there almost closes the gap.

And when was asked about raising revenue by taxing the corporations that don't pay taxes he blew it off by saying it would not raise that much money and that entitlements cuts was the answer.
So there we have it, they all agree that the 90% should pay more.

-Laelth

And we thought the red states were fleecing us, what with getting back more than they pay in. That right there shows who the REAL takers are.

is there a link to a source anywhere?

(on edit) I found this, if someone is wiling to pull out their old tax return

http://www.whitehouse.gov/2012-taxreceipt

but rather taxes they *don't* pay. For example, most places (if not all) give Walmarts huge tax breaks for fixed time periods, say 10 years, in exchange for building and opening stores to create local jobs. That amounts to a corporate subsidy because they are using local infrastructure but not paying for it. Then as soon as the subsidy time frame runs out, they close up the store and move to a new town, leaving unemployment and an empty shell of an ugly building.

They're doing that in my neck of the woods right now. They are closing the Rockland store and just built a new store about 10 miles away in the next town over.

Worse, this inboth cases this is prime oceanfront real estate that they are uglying up and destroying, at low cost due to tax breaks.

Furthermore, since they don't pay a living wage, they further deplete local resources since their employees generally are on food stamps and don't have health insurance.

The tax breaks for opening a story in Anytown, USA is usually not an income tax break....it is a break on paying property taxes to the local state, county, city, school district. They are also usually given prime land very cheap or free.

Companies like Wal-Mart are not stupid, and they hold out for these tax breaks. There is a cottage industry for this - they even have a trade magazine, giving updates on how much different cities and towns are willing to give away. The Wal-Marts of the world have created a competitive environment, where cities are pitted against each other...any new factory, major distribution center, etc. in this country will try this ploy.

In general, I think most of these should be made illegal. It violates equal protection to waive taxes for some, but not others. The one exception in my mind would be the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District. The philosophy of this district is - 'Hey, that piece of ground is run down, with practically no property taxes generated - let me borrow money from the next 15 years of taxes, that would be paid, if I put something new and valuable there'. This mechanism has the potential to build new infrastructure in very blighted areas...and I have seen it used with success. Although, there have been significant failures as well. But the underlying 'giveway' is future property tax dollars, that would never have been realized, if the property were to have remained run down.

getting big tax breaks, etc.

The principal is the same. And when Wallie moves in, their tax breaks are made up for by your increased local and state taxes.

It's embarrassing.

There is no way this could be accurate without some bizarre (aka 'dishonest') special meanings of words. Like "pay" and "subsidy"

Thr is no federal budget item for corporate subsidies that is more than 16 times the defense budget.

Fucking DUH.

Here's the breakdown for safety net costs:

Unemployment insurance 0.99% $18.70
Food and nutrition assistance 3.89% $73.48
Housing assistance 1.74% $32.87
Earned income, Making Work Pay, and child tax credits 2.81% $53.08
Supplemental Security Income 1.74% $32.87
Federal military and civilian employee retirement and disability 4.45% $84.06
Child care, foster care, and adoption support 0.57% $10.77
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families 0.61% $11.52
Railroad retirement and additional income security 0.46% $8.69

Medicare: $725.00


Defense: $465.45

of corporate giveaways and bloated defense budgets....I don't think
unsubstantiated numbers really persuade anyone. Part of the problem
today seems that no one believes anyone anymore - there is no sacred
source of information.

Good one

This will be posted front and center at my business this morning.

I was under the impression that about half of our tax dollars go to defense. If that's the case, I don't see how 15x our defense dollars could go to corporate subsidies. To be clear, I believe that way too much of our money goes to both defense and corporate subsidies, but I have a hard time believing those numbers.

On edit: I'm nearly certain those numbers are wrong. We spend ~$125 billion annually on corporate subsidies. If those number were to hold true, that would mean that we spend less than $10 billion annually on defense. I'm pretty sure that number's off by a few magnitudes of order.

What's not to understand?

Seriously, I cannot believe the freeper level shit that gets posted every damn day in the supposedly good cause of agitating fools with transparent falsehoods, as if there were no real problems to talk about.

Just lying about stuff is not (supposed to be) a core progressive value.

Over 100 recs for something a child ought to be able to tell is not true.

It's really disheartening to see so many accept figures like this blindly with very little critical thought.

$722 for the fact that the Fed lends money to banks at low rates, and $350 for Bank Fees on retirement accounts.

Okey-dokey.

And here's a good one... $1,268 for Overpriced Medications. Right, because if the federal government forced corporations to sell drugs cheaper they would be cheaper.

So why not just claim that we each "pay" every single penny any corporation makes out of our own pocket since if the government confiscated all corporations... etc.

The failure to confiscate is not what on would usually call a subsidy.

for Medicare and Medicaid does indeed mean that many billions of dollars are paid to drug companies that would otherwise not be.

All insurance companies negotiate for, and receive, very large discounts on non-generic drugs, especially. My Blue Cross Blue Shield plan gets Nexium for $37 for 30 days' supply, while the actual list for that drug is $258 for the same supply. Because the Feds cannot ask for a discount, there is indeed a large outlay that is unnecessary.

There's no "forcing" companies to charge less - negotiating for one of the biggest groups of buyers in the would yield a very usual, very businesslike discount for that business. Instead, we force the government not to negotiate.

I ran the numbers yesterday when I saw it spreading all over Facebook.

The fact that the Fed lends to banks at a lower rate than banks lend to customers, for instance, is not a corporate subsidy paid for by taxpayers.

And the failure to tax X at the rate some author simply decides HE thinks it should be taxed at is not a subsidy.

It is dishonest sensationalism that makes people dumber, not better informed.

They include $2000 a year for over paying for medications as well, that's kind of absurd as they're making it sound as if people are paying this in tax. Most people don't spend $2000 a year in medications period, much less in terms of overpayment. Also, the ratios are completely off in that graphic as well. As I noted before, about half of taxes go to defense. You spend much more in taxes going to defense than you do toward corporate welfare. A person making $50K a year is going to spend MUCH more than that figure for defense and he's going to spend much less than that in corporate welfar.

Over half of "discretionary spending" goes to defense. However, discretionary spending only accounts for a part of the fed budget



According to the CBO:

I don't see any slice of pie in that chart whose value is 15x greater than defense spending. In fact, only SS and Medicare/Medicaid surpass it. Any way you slice it, the numbers in the OP are WAY off.

Social Security is not costing anyone anything.

The Fund sits in its own fund, at a surplus of over 2 trillion dollars. And although the checks it sends out each month are handled and distributed by the US Fund, that doesn't mean that it should be considered to cost anyone anything from the US General Fund.

The lie of this pie chart is perpetuated by everyone out there who doesn't have to depend on Social Security. My Congressman, a Blue Dawg if ever there was one, uses this damn chart, to tell us in this county that our expected Social Security checks are a luxury. They aren't. The Hon. Mike Thompson will have a very generous pension when her retires from House of Reps.

But he is counting on his pie chart working and fooling us into thinking that Social Security is an "entitlement" and a luxury, when it really is something most people have paid into their entire lives.

This is definitely misleading several ways, I am pretty sure whoever made the meme is including tax incentives, as well as indirect taxtion, which are not technically subsidies. The language is all wrong. I think you get a much better picture if you look at per capita spending. We spend $2,600 per person per year on our US military budget. Regardless of what you are paying, the govt is spending this much per person. This was easy to find on Wikipedia, finding out how much America is giving away in tax incentives is a lot harder. The Cato institute puts direct incentives, actual subsidies to corporate America at about $870 per capita. But that doesn't tell the whole story does it? How do mega corporations make multi-billion profits and still end up paying 7% or 5% or 0% taxes? I found a website that puts the real corporate incentive rate at $6000 per capita. Check this out, and let me know if their calculation sounds even remotely legit?

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/23

If the number is only $4000 per person per year for corporate incentivization, we are spending almost DOUBLE paying off big business than we do on our ridiculous bloated military! That seems wrong to me. How about you?

There is this one, a really big deal in our economy, falsely justified by a "soaring" stock market....$722 per capita for Interest Rate Subsidies for Banks

"According to the Huffington Post, the "U.S. Government Essentially Gives The Banks 3 Cents Of Every Tax Dollar." They cite research that calculates a nearly 1 percent benefit to banks when they borrow, through bonds and customer deposits and other liabilities. This amounts to a taxpayer subsidy of $83 billion, or about $722 from every American family.

The wealthiest five banks -- JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs -- account for three-quarters of the total subsidy. The Huffington Post article notes that without the taxpayer subsidy, those banks would not make a profit. In other words, "the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders."

Just the defense budget of the federal government is $670 billion, or about 4.2% of the total GDP. At $50,000 of income, your income tax rate is 25%. You're also paying into Medicare, Unemployment and Social Security. Let's say 35% total, or about 1/3 is federally taxed to keep it simple. So, federal defense spending would be $2,135/3, or $712, out of the $50,000 income paid for national defense.

This does not count private defense industry sales going to individuals, towns, cities and states, as well as to overseas clientele that are not included in the federal budget. This also does not include Homeland Security, which is not 100% defense, as they have immigration and a few other things under their umbrella.

Similarly, Medicare & Medicaid are $940 billion, or $2,997/3=$999, of a $50,000 income paid for Medicare/Medicaid

Social Security is $883 billion, or $2,815/3=$938 of a $50,000 income.

SNAP is about $80 billion, or a mere $255/3 or $85 paid for SNAP.

NASA's budget was under $18 billion last year, or $56.75/3=$18.91 paid for NASA.

the EPA's budget is half of NASA, so only about $9.45 towards Environmental Protection...

The corporate welfare total is not 16 times the defense budget, either. It's way too high, but not that high.

Most of those numbers are not subsidies and/or are speculative at best.

The defense number is really misleading. If the graphic had two lines:

* Defense of American citizens
* Defense of military contractors

then I think there could be a real argument. Basically the amount it should take o actually defend Americans should be something like $150B and the other $600B is a form of corporate welfare.

That's almost 2 1/2 times what I make.

Love. This.

If corporatists want more money they can get a second job.

That's the way we do it in the "heartland."

I don't doubt them, but I've seen enough crap spouted as fact to never trust Internet images without a legitimate source.

By far, the largest discretionary part of the federal budget is Defense. So how are corp subsidies so much higher than defense?

Ask Americans what percentage of the federal budget goes to foreign aid and people affiliated with both parties are likely to overestimate it by ten or 20 times.

I agree with the sentiment behind the post, but the numbers are so far off. This is the left-wing equivalent of those ridiculous emails the right-wingers pass around.

common sense tells us that national defense is a huge portion of every tax dollar that is spent. The notion that "corporate subsidies" would dwarf defense spending is absurd. They are probably counting everything purchased from a corporation as a corporate subsidy, which would include all national defense hardware as well as anything else procured through the federal government.

Relies on Cato Institute figures for one component. Relies on fishy interest-rate assumptions for much of the "banking" subsidies. Counts billions in corporate profits as "subsidies". Yes, corporations do rip us off. But the profits they make from selling me overvalued crap should not be counted as corporate subsidies from the government.

Like I said earlier, I agree with the sentiment here. But these claims are overreaching, and IMHO the real numbers are damning enough without having to resort to this sort of hype.

I'm in the middle of a fight with someone about this subject - and this will be a great trump card!

None of the other amounts are even exact dollar amounts.

Retirement and Disability to Government Workers

Post a link to this nonsense please.


---

tired of their incessant whining!!!



http://www.zazzle.com/shutdown_the_gop_by_voting_in_2014_government-128195183613839642?rf=238107662556833486

If you accept and add up numbers 1,2,3,6,7 that would be

100
80
83
100
138

that equals 501 billion.

The DOD budget is $ 613 billion and if you add another $ 80 in related off the books intelligence it would be about $ 700 billion.

http://www.defense.gov/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=15056

Items 4 and 5 are rather fanciful projections but have absolutely nothing with government expenditures anyway.

I suspect that the non corporate items are based on a per capita item while the corporate item is based on a per family item, that would bring it much closer to reality.

I believe that more realistic calculations would bring home the point more effectively, because the way it is presented undermines credibility.

It would be fair to say that direct and indirect subsidies equal the defense budget and should be the first cuts we make in any budget, although some of those expenditures (incentives for alternate power sources, for example) are subsidies that we in fact want.

Since almost all arms, tanks, boats, planes, and drones are made by Capitalist Corporations?

Granted, they employ tens of thousands people and pay quite well + advantages.

Still, maybe that defense number is just for the troops, not the gears (which would be included in the last one).

That is sourced for christs sake, otherwise this falls to the level of info you see in Newsmax.

This is one of the most dishonest graphics I've ever seen and I don't think we do ourselves any favors by peddling this nonsense.

Great Post.

.

Since we're subsidizing WalMart's business model and all, I was just curious.

====================

on FB for being inaccurate.. they even apologized...

glad you found something for one of the numbers... but I dunno.

seems fishy to me. unless you can source out all the numbers, not worth passing around.. too risky.
don't wanna be like our opponents and just pass around everything we see cause it agrees with us

Sharing. Maybe there are a few people left on face book who haven't blocked my posts. Like my sister said today--My job isn't finished. I still have people to piss off.

Of course, our feeling is if they weren't so damned ignorant around these parts, they wouldn't be pissed off.

1> It's a made up category. There is no way to know what is included.

2> It is inconsistent. It has three zeros and no decimal place. The rest of the numbers are divided down to the cents.

3> It's 16.2 Times as big as defense. According to this: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/budget_pie_gs.php , defense is 22% of spending in 2014. This would mean 356% of our budget was allocated to this nebulous area of spending. I don't know what total % we'd end up with with all of the categories added, but it's pretty clear that 378% is already well above 100%, and therefore wrong.

4> Medicare is included but not SS?

5> It needs a link to to a credible source for the data.

This could be a good graphic if the numbers were realistic--or at least defined in a consistent, less arbitrary manner with real figures.