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Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

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Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

ScoobyDoo said:
I would imagine there has been someone giving calculations to the Congress over the entire history of SS. The politicians didn't listen. Public Pensions and the folks that ran those scams is another matter.
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You apparently are unaware of the bipartisan social security fix from 1983. Reagan and Rostenkowski worked together to fend off the pending insolvency of Social Security (at that time) by making several substantial adjustments to the program, which by the way were quite effective in retrospect. Their work extended the solvency of the Social Security system by around sixty years. It was quite unpopular at the time but it was the responsible thing to do and credit both men for committing their political capital to do what was needed at the time despite its difficulty and unpopularity.

The biggest problem with Social Security has been the ridiculously incredible expansion of disability benefits. The disability benefits have been added to and expanded several times, and now are way out of kilter compared to the rest of the program.

The Social Security retirement system has actually been run pretty well, with the only glaring exception being when the US government raided the Trust fund and confiscated all the assets. But that's not on Social Security nor its actuaries, that would have been criminal if a private company had done it.



Social Security retirement system and Medicare Part D are about the only two safety net programs that have actually worked as designed.

The 48 different jobs training programs run by various departments, not so much.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

unofan said:
People were warning of the impending SS demographic bubble as early as the 80s (maybe even before that, but I wasn't alive then and don't know). The boomers responded by sticking their fingers in their ears and cutting taxes.
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That is just wrong.

In 1983, Social Security payroll taxes were raised substantially, the Social Security retirement age was increased from 65 to 67, and a portion of social security benefits for high-income recipients were subjected to income tax for the first time.

Without action by March or April 1983, the Social Security trust fund would have started to run a slight deficit by midsummer.

both sides agreed to mutual sacrifice.... Democrats accepted a six-month delay in the annual cost-of-living adjustment and the increase in the retirement age, while Republicans accepted a faster-than-planned rise in payroll taxes and a substantial tax increase on the self-employed. The two sides closed the deal by subjecting up to half of Social Security benefits to income taxes for higher-income beneficiaries, a provision that allowed Democrats to say Republicans had passed a tax increase and Republicans to say Democrats had agreed to a benefit cut.

This agreement was rooted in a common willingness to solve the problem regardless of the political consequences.
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Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Kepler said:
Something pretty much all of us can unite on.

Wall Street is FIFA: they can only do this because we let them. The DOJ should keep their warrants warm.
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I don't believe in reincarnation. But she's making me wonder if Paul Wellstone has made a second coming. (Add to the analogy that Wellstone was Jewish IIRC. :) )
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

dxmnkd316 said:
I don't believe in reincarnation. But she's making me wonder if Paul Wellstone has made a second coming. (Add to the analogy that Wellstone was Jewish IIRC. :) )
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They overlap. Not sure reincarnation works like that. :)
 
FreshFish said:
That is just wrong.

In 1983, Social Security payroll taxes were raised substantially, the Social Security retirement age was increased from 65 to 67, and a portion of social security benefits for high-income recipients were subjected to income tax for the first time.
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Social security was never a lockbox. It's all one giant fund. What happened to the debt during the Reagan (pbuh) years? What happened to overall taxes? Who was hitting their peak earning years at that time?

And the fact they would raise the retirement age then but are unwilling to do so now is hilarious. So the boomers were fine screwing over their parents by raising the retirement age, but they aren't willing to make the same sacrifice now? Color me shocked.

Nice backtrack on the whole "government overhead is too high," by the way. Funny how social security is now a well run program when before it was part of the liberals' killing of America
 
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Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

unofan said:
Social security was never a lockbox. It's all one giant fund. What happened to the debt during the Reagan (pbuh) years? What happened to overall taxes? Who was hitting their peak earning years at that time?

And the fact they would raise the retirement age then but are unwilling to do so now is hilarious. So the boomers were fine screwing over their parents by raising the retirement age, but they aren't willing to make the same sacrifice now? Color me shocked.

Nice backtrack on the whole "government overhead is too high," by the way. Funny how social security is now a well run program when before it was part of the liberals' killing of America
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And sadly, my generation is too apathetic to screw over the baby boomers. :(
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Kepler said:
It's a start, but:
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2% is still higher than 0%.

If any of the 98% were really close, perhaps those should be getting reported in order to encourage those with IRAs and whatnot to vote their shares.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

FlagDUDE08 said:
2% is still higher than 0%.

If any of the 98% were really close, perhaps those should be getting reported in order to encourage those with IRAs and whatnot to vote their shares.
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When there are institutional investors owning big chunks of this stock, how does that work? Does the fund manager cast those votes? And do institutional investors tend to back executive compensation as part of mutual back-scratching, or do any of them act responsibly?

Edit: here's a Stanford study on whether say-on-pay (which was mandated by Dodd-Frank) is having any effect on exec theft, er, compensation. Short answer: probably not.
 
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Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

Kepler said:
When there are institutional investors owning big chunks of this stock, how does that work? Does the fund manager cast those votes? And do institutional investors tend to back executive compensation as part of mutual back-scratching, or do any of them act responsibly?

Edit: here's a Stanford study on whether say-on-pay (which was mandated by Dodd-Frank) is having any effect on exec theft, er, compensation. Short answer: probably not.
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In the time I have owned mutual funds and ETFs, I have never seen proxy materials related to them, so I have to assume that the fund manager is the one that casts the votes, because he/she is buying the shares, and using the corresponding price, relative to a multiplier, to give an index price. The only time I've ever seen an opportunity to vote shares is when I have owned direct shares of company stock.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

FlagDUDE08 said:
In the time I have owned mutual funds and ETFs, I have never seen proxy materials related to them, so I have to assume that the fund manager is the one that casts the votes, because he/she is buying the shares, and using the corresponding price, relative to a multiplier, to give an index price. The only time I've ever seen an opportunity to vote shares is when I have owned direct shares of company stock.
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Thanks.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

FlagDUDE08 said:
In the time I have owned mutual funds and ETFs, I have never seen proxy materials related to them, so I have to assume that the fund manager is the one that casts the votes, because he/she is buying the shares, and using the corresponding price, relative to a multiplier, to give an index price. The only time I've ever seen an opportunity to vote shares is when I have owned direct shares of company stock.
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Yes, the fund managers cast the votes. Most investments held within a fund are not disclosed to investors without specific inquiry as only the top 20 investments are required to be listed in the prospectus, therefore shareholders wouldn't even know they have a stake in a specific company.
 
St. Clown said:
Yes, the fund managers cast the votes. Most investments held within a fund are not disclosed to investors without specific inquiry as only the top 20 investments are required to be listed in the prospectus, therefore shareholders wouldn't even know they have a stake in a specific company.
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Technically, you don't own shares of those companies, do you? The brokerage owns the stocks (assets) and issues shares of mutual funds (liabilities). if you ask for your cash back, they sell some of their stocks to get he money, etc.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

LynahFan said:
Technically, you don't own shares of those companies, do you? The brokerage owns the stocks (assets) and issues shares of mutual funds (liabilities). if you ask for your cash back, they sell some of their stocks to get he money, etc.
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Technically, you do have ownership of the underlying assets by purchasing shares of the fund. You're paying the fund company to manage your assets, much like people do with individual trusts, only now they're taking advantage of economies of scale with regards to the management fees. A mutual fund is basically like a trust fund and everyone who purchases into it has a portion of that trust; the more people purchasing into it, the greater the potential size of the trust. Effectively, however, your ownership is so diluted for even just an average-sized fund that your percentage of shares are going to be relatively meaningless if you can't form a large coalition of some sort with other shareholders of that same fund to force some sort of change.
 
Re: Frayed Ends: Business, Economics, and Tax Policy 3.0

LynahFan said:
Technically, you don't own shares of those companies, do you? The brokerage owns the stocks (assets) and issues shares of mutual funds (liabilities). if you ask for your cash back, they sell some of their stocks to get he money, etc.
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They don't even sell the stocks. They have enough cash reserves to just take ownership of the stocks themselves until another buyer comes along.

If the brokerage goes belly up, though, the assets are the collateral used to pay the creditors. They'd probably liquidate first, though.
 
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