by Marc Joffe, Cato at largeJuly 16, 2024.
Extract:
To determine whether the government is still subsidizing California drivers today, Krit Chanwong and I reviewed a variety of local, state, and federal information for fiscal year 2022-23. We used actual figures where available, but were sometimes forced to use budgeted amounts due to a lack of sufficiently detailed actual data.
by Eric Boehm, ReasonJuly 16, 2024.
The reality, however, is a little different. The contract signed by the Teamsters and UPS only requires air conditioning in vans and trucks purchased in 2024 and beyond. In June, CNN reported that UPS has not yet purchased new trucks equipped with air conditioning.
As a result, Teamsters members who work for UPS are I’m still hot at work this summer—while their boss turned a victory lap into a speech of choice at the RNC.
An O’Brien supporter might argue that progress in the workplace is always incremental, and that air conditioning in newly purchased trucks is better than no air conditioning at all. That’s absolutely true.
But if unions were essential to winning these concessions from employers, why are Amazon’s non-union delivery drivers working in factories? fully air-conditioned trucks?
by Romina Boccia, Cato at largeJuly 18, 2024.
Extract:
If the Social Security program continues to operate as it currently does, an average American worker earning about $60,000 a year could soon face an additional $3,000 in payroll taxes, bringing his or her total tax burden to more than $10,000 a year.
Figure 1 shows how much taxes would increase for an average American worker if Congress raised the payroll tax rate from 12.4 percent to 17.5 percent, which is necessary to maintain the current structure of Social Security benefits through 2097. With this higher payroll tax rate, the annual payroll tax burden for average earners would increase by more than 40 percent, from $7,449 to $10,512.
by Robert Posen and Charles Blahous, MarketWatchJuly 16, 2024.
Extract:
The ratio of Social Security workers to collectors is even more directly driven by immigration than by rising fertility. That’s because immigrants are more likely to arrive as working-age, tax-paying adults, whereas it typically takes nearly two decades for native-born Americans to make appreciable payroll contributions. Social Security Administrators Report 2024contains a sensitivity analysis showing that if future immigration were 35% higher than currently projected, the Social Security funding gap would be reduced by 11%. Immigration cannot eliminate the Social Security funding gap, but it contributes to it.
And:
According to a 2013 actuarial note from the Office of the Chief Actuary of Social Security explains that these contributions only bring benefits to the individual if they subsequently reach legal work permit and residency status (or leave the United States altogether), and whether they have paid into the U.S. long enough to qualify for benefits. The vast majority of people who enter the U.S. illegally never obtain that status, and furthermore, according to the brief, “the data indicate that a relatively small proportion of those who could potentially receive benefits do so.”
As a result, almost all of these immigrants pay social security taxes without ever claiming benefits. In effect, these immigrants subsidize Social Security for the rest of us. These subsidies are significant. For example, 2010Social Security began to experience cash deficits that have persisted ever since. collecting taxes on wages of unauthorized immigrantsSocial Security would have started recording deficits a year earlier, in 2009.
This last point is particularly important for people (and there are many) who think that immigrants harm Social Security.
